My story of of last year's Christmas eve is an enjoyable one that involves stupidity and toughness. As my family feasted on homemade pizza, a Christmas even tradition, my brother Joe dared Fred and I to a challenge. Now this wasn't one of the usual challenges of who can do the most push-ups or you can do pull-ups using the decorative trim above the doorway, this dare required a lot more courage.
The Dare: "Let's see who can run the farthest out into the field with our shoes off. The last person to turn around wins." Now this was on Dec. 24, 2007, we had about a foot of snow in the farmers field as that time.
We stood on the back porch of my parents house looking out into the night at the snow covered potato field. Each one of us loosened the shoelaces of our boots while trying to remain calm. The idea of having to run so far to prove your man hood and then run that same distance to return to safety was a hard one to swallow.
The signal was yelled and use boys threw our boots and socks off and took off through the snow. Joe started off in a dead-sprint, while Fred and I ran side by side. After 100-200 feet, Fred screamed like a girl and said, "see ya." I could tell that his retreat was because he was smart and not that his toes were already frozen. But I didn't want to be smart, I wanted to be tough. I kept my pace and slowly overtook Joe, as he started to get winded. By the time I passed Joe he was breathing hard but going strong.
Every step I took just made it worse. It's easy to know far you can go, but it's hard to tell where that half way point is. I knew that I could have ran across the whole field barefoot, about 300 yards, but the idea of running back across it was death. I finally turned around after 200 yards.
As I turned around, Joe was way behind me. I thought that the sight of me giving up would let him tot he same. No, he kept shuffling his feet till he got to my turnaround spot. He took three steps pass that and then turned abound. This made it so that he was the one that ran the farthest and for the most time.
I eventually got back to the house and was dead. I couldn't feel my feet. It then dawned on me that if my feet were dying, then Joe's feet had already fallen off. I came into the house as if the world was going to die. I tried to recruit family members to go and rescue my brother.
He eventually got back to the house and received all the "Dude Points" for the night and the year. He totally topped us all.
All I have to say, is that I couldn't sleep that whole night. My feet had a hard time thawing out. Even on Christmas morning, it hurt to walk on my feet. It took about 24 hours for my feet to feel normal again.