Swallowing my pride: Knowing how to lose is important

I’ve never been in an eating contest.
The only competitive eating I’ve ever taken part of was making sure I got to the dinner table before my brother and old man had shoveled all the good stuff on their plate.
But there I was at Glen’s grocery store last week, doing deep knee bends and trying to stretch out my stomach before the 6th Annual Paczki Eating Contest.
The challenge: who could polish off two paczkis the quickest.
Simple, I thought.
I made sure not to eat breakfast. Everyone I talked to said use water to soften the Polish pastry so it was easier to swallow.
I know it was all for fun, for charity, for the entertainment of the Manistee school kids cheering us on.
It shouldn’t have, but it started to become serious for me.
I’ve always been a tad competitive, and even though I had absolutely no experience with eating contests, I began thinking, “Yeah, I can do this. I can win.”
My competitors had already been made known to me. My man foe in the media category was Guy Wynn, the disc jokey for 101.5 Kool Hits, who had won two consecutive years in a row.
“He’s a beast,” everyone said. “You don’t have a chance.”
Nonsense, I thought. Maybe he just never had a worthy opponent like myself. It’s just stuffing two paczkis down my gullet in a short amount of time. How hard could it be, right?
I would turn Guy Wynn into Guy Lose.
The moments before any contest are harrowing. Time to pump yourself up and psyche out the enemy. I tried casting dirty looks at my opponents, who also included a spokesmen from another area newspaper.
I hopped up and down. I stretched again. I sat down and faced the two paczkis on the plate. Next to me, Gluttonous Guy was doing the same.
I’ve got this, I thought.
I didn’t.
Mr. Wynn is a quick-eating animal. It was poetry the way he jammed those jelly-filled gems into his mouth. The amazing alacrity, the stunning speed, the hurried hustle was truly something to behold.
That’s how I ended up, beholding, sitting there with red jelly smeared on my face watching Mr. Wynn, well, win.
I was still finishing up the last bites of my first paczki when his arms went up in victory.
My mouth was filled like a chipmunk. In front of the table were several rows of elementary school kids who were cheering us on.
Even though the disc jockey was getting most of the glory, a little girl passed in front of me said, “Good job.”
I was suddenly reminded the contest was about having fun, and that knowing how to lose gracefully is more important than knowing how to win.
I slowly swallowed, the paczki and my pride.