Adam's Song

Let me tell you a story. Our hero's name is Adam. Adam went to a church camp year after year because he thought the girls were pretty. Oh, so very pretty. The camp he attended had separated the boys and girls (it was a church camp, after all) on two sides of a rather large lake and split them further up into separate cabins of a dozen or so kids, give or take a camper. Each cabin had two leaders to make sure the campers didn't dispose of each other in any brutal ways. One of these cabin leaders brought an item to the camp central to our story.

Mouth wash. It was named "Dr. Something or Other" and it was 70% alcohol. It appeared normal, but to this day Adam can't find the mouth wash in any store. It's almost as if it was deposited there from the very gates of Hell.

The other boys in his cabin took turns swishing said mouth wash. Most of them only endured a few moments of burning, searing pain before spitting. One boy, probably named Magnus, kept the concoction in his mouth a full minute before triumphantly spewing it. Since everyone succumbed so quickly (except Magnus, of course), Adam politely declined when offered the communal bottle. After all, he was trying his best to look cool in front of all his cabin mates, who were quite impressionable.

The next day, however, Adam did try a shot in the comfort of the solitary company of his cabin leader. He gathered his wits, gave the vile liquid a sniff, said a little prayer (something along the lines of "Dear God, don't let my mouth fall off"), and threw back a cap full of ginger colored fluid.

Adam would be lying if he said it didn't burn something fierce. He would also be lying if he said it didn't bring tears instantly to his eyes. But, honestly, it wasn't as bad as he had expected. In fact, he spit it out two minutes later out of boredom. His apparent natural tolerance for the effects of nearly pure alcohol gave him an idea.

This idea would be one he regretted for a long time (though he would relish any opportunity to tell the story). If he were so inclined, he probably would have stolen the mouth wash and taken advantage of its high content of alcohol. He wasn't inclined, though, so he did the next best thing: he challenged Magnus to a gargle-off.

The setup: the two contestants would face off in the downstairs area of the cabin. In one corner was Magnus, the champion whose mouth wash powers everyone had witnessed. In the other corner was Adam, the challenger and underdog, whom the gathered crowd may not have been able to name. A pile of loose change, a few stray dollar bills, and a warm coke soon appeared on the floor. This was the fight purse; everyone in the crowd threw in something. They were not old enough tp understand the basics of gambling, so they threw their money into the pot to go to the winner, not expecting any payout should their fighter win.

Without a bell or any official signal, the contest began. Both combatants threw back a full mouth load of the concentrated evil. The manic crowd heaved and threw themselves on every agonized tear that rolled down Magnus and Adam's cheek. After a few minutes the tears stopped forming and the faces locked in grimacing stares soon turned to looks of boredom. The audience quieted as the contestants encountered a factor they had not expected:

Numbness.

The pain seared and blew all the pain receptors in their mouths. This added a measure of danger that, in all honestly, the cabin leaders should have recognized, addressed, and used as the reason to shut down the competition ( though you could argue the leaders probably shouldn't have let it be held in the first place). After the pain left, the waiting game began. Everything shifted gears from judging who could withstand the pain the longest to deciding who could withstand the boredom of long minutes passing while a liquid festers in your mouth.

Adam previously held the record for mouthwash gargling at nearly three minutes (this was unofficial because the only available witness was the cabin leader). The stopwatch was pushing 25 minutes when they both conceded to spit at the same time, declaring the match a draw. The pot was split up (not more than 3 dollars each, though well-earned) and the warm coke was given to Adam as Magnus was more of a Pepsi man.

There were three immediate results of the face-off. One, all of the guys in his cabin could mostly remember his name (it was something like Adam). Two, the sheer amount of time spent with 140 proof alcohol in his mouth lead to a decent amount of alcohol seeping into his cheeks. Though certainly not drunk, this was as affected as he had ever been by alcohol (not counting NyQuil). Luckily, the face-off had been at night and Adam went straight to bed. If his genius plan had unraveled during the day, he would have risked walking tipsy around the Christian camp. This would have inevitably lead to a phone call to his parents saying "Come pick up your wino son."

The third immediate effect was his mouth looked funny when he looked in the mirror. The next morning Adam checked the mirror again and his gums were angry. It hurt to eat the cereal from the cafeteria and rubbing his tongue on the roof of his mouth uncovered large blisters there. They were roughly the shape of his tongue, which had been plastered against the roof the night before. By the end of the day all of the skin had turned white. His taste buds, normally only seen as small uniform bumps on his tongue, were raised and looked like white, fleshy half-opened umbrellas.

The mere thought of eating food made his mouth hurt and he didn't dare put anything to his lips besides water. The white skin was the top layer of skin which Adam had managed to completely burn off thanks to a chemical burn from the mouth wash. Soon the white skin peeled away and revealed long strips of raw gum underneath.

Adam tried to make the best of nearly becoming the only 14 year old he knew with dentures. There was a girl named Patricia at the camp he had talked to all week and had developed a crush on. She didn't throw pine cones at his eyes when he approached her, so he assumed she felt the same way. Adam decided to turn his experience of pain into an experience of manliness. When the time was right, he told her this story. When our hero got to the part where the dead skin peels off in long white strips, he pulled open his lips to show her that it was no mere story. This act, which should have said, "This is how stupid I am." was meant to be interpreted as "This is how awesome I am." Undoubtedly, Patricia did her best to hide her horror at the gaping maw before her. They quickly went back to whatever it was they were doing and she no longer spent time with him after that.

One of the worst things about this ordeal was Adam's inability to eat. The show-down took place in the middle of the week and the parents didn't come to pick up their kids until the weekend. By the time Adam's dad picked him up on Saturday morning Adam hadn't eaten for days. As this wasn't his first year at camp, previous rides home had been spent excitedly talking about adventures had while inwardly pining for the girls he had crushed on and knew would never see again. This trip, however, was different. Answers to questions like "How was your week?" and "Did you have any fun?" were answered at best with monosyllabic grunts. The dad noticed something amiss and called Adam out on it. So far on the trip home, Adam could only think of the throbbing in his mouth and the gnawing in his stomach. When his dad keyed into something being wrong, Adam told him everything. Needless to say, his dad was irate. Furious, even. I won't go into details, but you can imagine the one-sided conversation that lasted the rest of the hour long car ride.

Adam's dad thought maybe soup would be good for him and made him a bowl if chicken noodle goodness, but one sip made Adam's raw meat mouth scream in every molecule. It was still too acidic to eat. After some other experiments they settled on strawberry flavored Ensure, which to Adam tastes like liquid awesomeness in a bottle. If this old people drink hadn't been developed, our hero may not be alive today (don't worry about IV's and all the other medical things that could have been done; after all, this is a story).

Adam was, despite everything, very lucky. First, his mom wasn't there to pick him up and receive his news firsthand. Being a nurse, she didn't think of self-inflicted chemical burns as something her son should do to himself. He was lucky, too, so much of his gums didn't die that his teeth became loose or even become independent of his mouth. Also, Adam had a genetically high gumline that made many of his teeth look shorter than they were. His parents had considered an operation that would rectify this, but it would not have been covered under their insurance. Turns out, Adam saved his parents a bunch of money, not by switching to Geico, but rather by burning off the top layer of his gums, with the same result as the operation.

Probably the biggest thing about this story, mind you, is that Adam's name wasn't Adam at all.

It was Aaron.

It was me.