By Paul Esau (Sports Editor) – Email
If there is one thing I know for certain about my gender, it’s that we men love to gamble. There is no situation, no circumstance that is too sacred to be spiced up with a couple of bets, a little high-stakes action. I mean, think about it. What’s the first thing the Roman soldiers did after crucifying Jesus? Why, cast lots for his clothes of course. Never mind that they’d just murdered a presumed deity, what the Romans really wanted was a gambling fix. It makes perfect sense… if you’re a guy. Everything in life has the potential for competition, and everything competitive can only be improved by adding betting.
Here a true, completely authentic example that I just made up:
Ralph:
I don’t feel pain.
Steve:
Your mom doesn’t feel pain.
Ralph:
Go ahead, punch me. I won’t feel it.
Steve:
Dude…
Ralph:
Fine, punch me in the face. Twenty bucks says I don’t flinch.
Steve:
Fifty bucks, but I get to hit you with this cricket bat.
Ralph:
Deal.
Now I know that you, the reader, are going to tell me this is an unrealistic example, and of course it’s unrealistic. It’s meant to be unrealistic! We both know that Steve would actually have upped the bet to a hundred and pulled out an ice pick, but I don’t want to be seen as condoning gratuitous violence in a family newspaper. The point is that for men, betting is a primal need, and turning down a bet is like having to admit you were the third-string point guard in high school, or that you know all the words to that “colored wind” song from Disney’s Pocahontas.
So really, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that there are places in the world where men get drunk and race maggots for money. More interesting by far is the question of how such a concept came to fruition. The following excerpt is an anecdote stolen from Dave Barry, who claims to have interviewed one of the co-creaters of maggot racing (a fish bait salesman who sells maggots for bait) in a grungy Montana bar: “He explained that one day in the bar, a customer complained that there weren’t enough maggots in the container he had bought, so they poured them out and counted them right on the bar, and some of the maggots (possibly disguised as attorneys) started crawling away, and suddenly, eureka, (Greek, meaning “They probably had a few beers in them”) the maggot-racing idea was born.”
It sounds like unadulterated genius if I’ve ever heard it, yet I have to admit that I have a few questions. First of all, it’s hard not to question the story of a man who sells maggots as his day job. Logically, the selling of maggots requires the collection of maggots, which requires an almost total lack of self-worth and a community-enforced commitment to celibacy. Nobody wants those genes passed on, even in Montana.
Yet his idea has festered, pussed, and spread and found a natural home in the hearts of our peculiar brethren across the Atlantic. In England the sport has achieved its own glorious renaissance, and flowered into a number of variations, including “Middle for a Diddle,” “Corner Stormer,” and the chillingly named “Munch a Loser,” which is exactly what it sounds like.
It only proves, once again, that life is much stranger than fiction, maggots are disgusting, and men are idiots.
