Jennifer Laberee 🪔

In Amarillo I watched a man eat on a stage. A steakhouse put him on a raised platform in the center of the room, set a clock above his head, and four hundred people watched him chew. This is not a restaurant. This is a colosseum that serves baked potatoes. The Big Texan. The 72-ounce steak challenge. Seventy-two ounces is two kilograms. I have held two kilograms of beef before. It was a small dog. I asked the waitress if this was a competition. She said, "It's dinner, honey." Dinner does not have a countdown timer. Dinner does not have an audience. This is not dinner. A man climbed the stage. A child yelled, "You got this!" At forty-five minutes he stopped chewing and stared at the plate the way a man stares at a mountain he will not summit. He did not got this. The clock ran out. The room clapped. He paid seventy-two dollars. His wife rubbed his back. I said to the waitress, "Your country turns a meal into a trial by combat." She said, "You want some cobbler, baby?" Then I learned this started because cowboys in 1960 threw dollar bills into a hat to see who could eat the most. One man ate everything. The owner said, anyone who can do that eats free. He has been saying it for sixty-five years. The restaurant burned down in 1976. They rebuilt it bigger and put the stage in the center. A nation that rebuilds a steakhouse larger than it was before it burned is a nation that has made its decision about fire. Then I asked about the record. A woman. A hundred and twenty-five pounds. Four minutes and eighteen seconds. Then she ate a second one. I looked at my fourteen-ounce steak. It was the smallest thing on the menu. It was the largest meal of my life. In my country, the highest discipline is to eat less. In your country, a woman half my size ate fifteen pounds of beef on a stage, and when she finished, the building stood up. Both countries are right. I have never been more sure of anything.

Dropping her off at the airport tomorrow… 🥹

Did parents really just let their kids wander the neighborhood all day with no phone and just say be home before dark?? Be honest