I participated in this hot chicken tenders eating contest, because it was hosted by Willy’s, basically my favorite eatery in the entire city of Atlanta metropolitan area.  This is the same company in which I became the self-proclaimed Burrito King™ of Atlanta when I won a promotion they had where I had to visit and make a transaction at all 28 Willy’s locations within a 30-day span which I accomplished in four.

Well, the Willy who created my favorite burrito joint got into hot chicken, and has been slowly expanding his restaurant portfolio into the hot chicken game, opening a location of one of his new ventures not terribly far from where I am.  And then I saw that there would be a hot chicken tender eating contest, and I thought to myself, no better way to flex on the small world of Willy’s than to go and win another contest.

After all, being Korean gives me a natural +10 in spicy food tolerance, and what the fuck do white people know about spicy food anyway, so I figured it would be a layup to roll in, crush three hot chicken tenders in the span of six minutes and walk away with a little bit of swag.  Honestly, the photo on their wall of winners was probably the most important prize of all, because when it comes to fat guy accolades, showing my superiority at spice tolerance is something that I wouldn’t mind flexing on all the pleebs who can’t handle heat.

Anyway, I came, went and saw, and much like I knew I could, crushed the three hot chicken tenders in six minutes and walked away a winner.  This wasn’t a contest where there was a last man standing, but basically series of waves, where 10 people take the challenge on at a time.  Six people bounced in the first wave, and I was a part of the second wave where another five people dropped out from the heat.  I didn’t stick around for the third wave, because I had already proven my point.

Howlin’ Willy’s hot chicken was definitely among the higher tiers of spicy I’ve ever had in my life, but I will maintain that it was still not the spiciest thing I’d ever eaten either; that distinction goes to some nuclear pork I had in Seoul, where mythical then-gf and I had to tap and waste the food, and the retribution was fairly immediate.  But as for Willy’s, I definitely felt the heat through the challenge, but I was able to make it through without much difficulty.  The heat was slow acting, but after it burns, it burns off quickly, and before I left the shopping center, I was already back to feeling fine.

That is until the remainder of the day progressed, and I started to get hit with what I’m guessing was the mother of heartburn.  I don’t really know, because I really didn’t know what heartburn was supposed to feel like.  It wasn’t like indigestion pain, but just this really dull ache in my stomach that made me want to stop whatever it was I was doing, and just put myself into a position where I could apply pressure to my gut or be in a folded position where the pressure would alleviate.

Effectively, the rest of my day was ruined, because I couldn’t really get comfortable, and it impacted my ability to be present with my kids and physically competent to operate at a normal level.  I crushed a bunch of Tums hoping it would help, and I don’t think it really did.  After the kids were down, I ran to the store to get some Pepto, since the thought of something coating my insides was an appealing one, and by the time I went to bed, I probably downed a quarter of the bottle.

I’d never felt more relieved when the indigestion did hit, because it was finally giving my body the opportunity to purge the hot chicken from my body and not to get too graphic but boy did it feel as hot evacuating the body as it did burning my mouth earlier in the day.

Fortunately, a night’s sleep seemed to cure what ailed me, but before going to bed, I expressed that I felt a lot of regret for participating in a fairly meaningless contest, even if it was held by Willy’s.  The prizes were minimal, but the punishment I put onto my 40+ year old body was pretty vicious.

At first, I was just wondering if this was just my body reacting to ghost pepper, something I don’t really think I’d ever had before.  But the reality is more likely that this was a stark reminder of how I’m not the 25-year old that could eat whatever I wanted and shrug it off within hours.  Lesson learned that this was a situation where I could’ve been smarter and erred on the side of not punishing my body for a pretty useless reason.  Even for Willy’s, no matter how much of a fan I am of the brand.