Challenge 2025
Thanks to social media, each new generation faces a unique “Challenge”. “I realize that doing this is stupid, incredibly uncomfortable, and potentially dangerous, Mom, but everyone on-line is doing it!”
The first “Challenge” began in Norway (of all places) at the dawn of the Digital Age in 1991. The Cold Water Challenge required a choice between jumping into a frigid fjord or donating money to cancer research. It really took off when those wacky Norwegians added “buying drinks for the bar” to the options. Karaoke Night seldom drew as many customers as Cold Water Challenge Night at fjord-side bars. “Erik is drunk enough to dodge the ice floes and jump into the water. If he isn’t, free drinks for everyone! Skol!”
Special Olympics began the New Year’s Day Polar Plunge shortly thereafter. Local news telecasts across America featured hundreds of folks stripping down and racing into oceans, bays, lakes, and rivers. Local news on January 2 then featured overcrowded Pneumonia Wards in local hospitals.
The Cold Water Challenge morphed into the Ice Bucket Challenge in 2015. Cold water immersion is difficult in the summer. Friends of an ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) patient posted video on (the late and unlamented) Twitter showing a large bucket of icy water inverted over the head of a seated victim. The victim then challenged other folks to suffer the same. If they refused, they had to donate to ALS.
It became a national phenomenon. Ethel Kennedy (mother of RFK, Jr. and currently rolling over in her grave) challenged then-President Obama. A publicity-seeking New York real estate mogul named Trump also challenged Obama. Barack made a donation to ALS instead demonstrating the class now missing at the White House.
The “Challenge” for 2025 is the “9–9–9”. No, it does not involve prank-dialing the UK’s emergency phone number. The “Challenge” requires consuming nine hot dogs and nine beers during a nine inning baseball game. This certainly beats the crap out of jumping into a freezing fjord, racing into the North Atlantic on New Year’s Day, or getting an icy head rinse. A hot dog on a bun contains 300 calories. A beer is 150. Most nine inning baseball games run three hours max. The 9–9–9 Challenge provides 4,050 calories in that three hours which is twice the recommended daily caloric intake for an adult. Sitting in the stands doesn’t burn off many of those calories.
2025’s “Challenge” is so appropriate for the Trump Era. It has no charitable or societal benefit. It is detrimental to health. And America’s #1 Junk Food Fan, Donald J. Trump would love it.
By Ed Dufton
