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Posted by Eric S on September 15, 2006 at 22:56:51:
This took place in early August at my annual North Coast Party. I was cleaning some abs and fish in the campground down by the water faucet. I decided to pull out the eye balls of the lingcod I was cleaning so I could have some disgusting items to cook up to fed to my newly arrived and un-initiated first time guests.
I had 2 eye balls out and was working on getting the other 2 out of a vermillion that I shot when a kid walks up to me and says ”Hey mister, what are you going to do with those eyeballs?” I told him I feed them to my guests and they must eat them to be initiated into the loyal order of the North Coast Divers. I explained that such an honor goes way beyond such silliness as DIR, ankle weights, wet steel, split vs paddle, voodoo gas, trimix, computer, on the fly, bp/w, bc, maximum crap, minimalist, deep air, singles, doubles, yolk vs din……
He just looked at me with a confused look with his head slightly cocked kind of like a puppy that just heard a new sound for the first time. I said “Oh, never mind”.
Just then a group of his camp party showed up. One guy was his uncle, the other was his dad, and his little brother was there too. There were a few others there, I don’t know who they were, probably some relatives I would imagine. I told them about the destination of the fish eyeballs and the uni that I had managed to clean before their arrival. They all got a good belly laugh out of the prospect and began to dare the kid to eat one of the eyeballs who originally came walking up.
These guys reminded me of the gang that hang out in the ally on the TV show King of the Hill. They were all hanging onto beers and though everything was funny. A good example of the happy American camper; away from it all and feelin’good.
The father bellowed “That boy’ll eat anything you dare him to, ‘specially if there money in it!”. I asked “You mean he’ll eat it raw, right now!? And his dad said “hell yeah he will, I’ll bet he’ll do it for 5 bucks, I can’t believe the stupid sh_t he’ll do for a few dollars.” I thought “Oh man, this is whacked!”
The kid protested and declared that 5 dollars was not enough, he demanded $20 to perform this stunt. We told him no way, $10 tops or the deal was off. He thought for a second and said OK.
So the final deal was that he had to chew up a raw fish eyeball freshly extracted from a dead lingcod and swallow it without puking, very important, NO PUKING.
We got a warm up session, his trainer rubbed his shoulders in his corner and in a few minutes he was ready. He took the eyeball and looked at it for a long time and after 20 seconds of pondering said “I’m going to need a soda to do this”. His dad yelled to someone in his camp “Someone get him a damn coke, he’s actually gonna do it!” In a second there was a coke handed to him. By this time all the laughter and hoopla had begun to generate a crowd. We had quite an audience wanting to see this disgusting and vile act. I don’t know if it’s like a car wreck on the freeway or a like a person lying bleeding on the sidewalk, why must people gawk at such things? What is the fascination with morbidity? Well I can tell you that in this case we were all drunk and it was just plain funny. Later I did feel we used the kid as some sort of sick circus side show but then he did get $10 out of us too, I guess everyone considered each other a sucker. OK, the soda was opened and the drum roll started, the kid was concentrating and pow! There it went in. We could see him trying desperately to bite down hard and pop it so he could get it down. He chewed and chewed but after what seemed like minutes and probably hours to him he removed it from his mouth and said there was no way he could chew it because it was too tough. I took it and made a slice in it with my knife to pop the fluid and gave it back. He popped it in his mouth again and this time ALL the fluid gushed out and he had it going everywhere. He began trying to chew on the eyeball to break it down but eyeballs are way tougher than you’d think. He attempted to swallow the thing whole over and over but finally his gag reflex began to win and there was no way it was going to happen. He pulled the thing out of his mouth and he was sweating hard and his face was red as if he had just done a round with another 13 year old in a boxing match.
He explained in a shrill voice that he couldn’t swallow it because the optic nerve got caught on his braces and thus preventing him from swallowing the eyeball. I did see that that was the case when he finally gave up so I came to his defense and as his attorney demanded that he get paid his $10.
His family agreed.
He received a deafening applause from all the onlookers that attended this sick and disgusting display of child exploitation. But you’d never know with the smile on his face as he was thinking “Those suckers, that was the easiest ten bucks I ever made!” 
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