Asklemmy

Ahhh, I've won a goodly number of things.

Back in school, me and this one girl spent years going back and forth as spelling bee winners.

Won a watermelon seed spitting contest.

Jr high, I didn't win shit except some bad memories, but that's off topic lol.

High school, I took a couple of weightlifting wins.

After that, as an adult, it was more hit or miss. Never anything worth money, or not enough to matter.

I am still absurdly proud of winning a biscuit cookoff at the county fair. Not even joking, I was up against old southern ladies that had been making biscuits longer than my dad had been alive. I had been working on perfecting my recipe at that point for about ten years. I won that fucking ribbon twice. It's all about technique, how you handle the dough.

While it was kinda low key, no prizes, no ribbons, nothing physical, I won a cross school sparring session at the dojo I went to. We cross trained with several other dojos of various arts. But the guy that owned our dojo got five of those to all get together and do this big session.

Basically, you go in and you spar. Light contact only, you have to protect your training partner. But you get in the circle and you go until you tap, or someone scores a hit that would be a KO. Next person steps in when that happens. I was taking classes in both Japanese jujutsu and American kempo. This was maybe a year into things, so I was still raw as hell.

We were in three groups, beginners, intermediate and advanced. I was thrown into intermediate. I can't recall how many of us were there total. I wanna say it was a little over a dozen in that group, plus maybe twenty in the beginners, and a handful in advanced.

Anyway, I was third in. I did the full group. Got damn close to an actual KO when an axe kick was faster than I thought. Was damn near choked or otherwise close to tapping more than I can recall. I was breathing fire and eating bitter. Like, my throat was in more pain than anything else because it doesn't matter how well you hydrate, you're panting and struggling so hard it gets dry in seconds. And I had to pause twice to vomit, hence eating bitter lol. I can't recall the japanese phrase for it.

Anyway, the first two guys cycled back in, and I managed to scrape out an arm bar and a leg lock. The circle starts again, and I'm wiped. Like, my arms are rubber, I'm dizzy and can't see straight, I'm wobbling all over the place. I don't even remember the last two guys. But the last one got me. Basically just pushed me over lol. I had nothing left in the tank. But I was the only one in any of the groups to go a full circle.

I have no clue where it came from. I'm not exactly Mr stamina. I was a power lifter, I wasn't built for that kind of sustained effort. I damn sure didn't manage the feat the next meetup lol. Did well, but not running the circle well.

But! I did get my dinner and drinks paid for out of it.

Later on, as a bouncer, I got into some real fights and some of those were way less of a "win" in my mind.

About the only thing I've ever won that came with enough money to amount to anything was a chili cookoff. Prize was a hundred for the winner. So, you know, not a big prize or anything. This was small time stuff. I did do some other cooking stuff at a state level, but never got wins. I spent that hundred on my nephew. He wanted a guitar, and had been saving. He had found one he liked at a pawn shop, and was short something like fifty bucks. So I gave him the hundred to finish it off and get some strings or whatever.