Eat the Worm

Cinco de Mayo fell on a Tuesday this week and since Tuesdays are not great party days, we decided to celebrate at work on Friday with Ocho de Mayo. It has about as much fiesta significance as Cinco de Mayo, after all. Really it was just an opportunity to eat chips with guacamole and salsa, drink Mexican beers with lime, and to watch my coworker Patrick gamely eat the worm.

I happened to have brought back several small bottles of Mezcal from Mexico over the years, each with a fat little worm resting at the bottom of the yellow liquid within. Patrick had never experienced this phenomenon, so to ready him for what was about to happen, we all gathered in the conference room and viewed the scene in the movie Urban Cowboy where Scott Glenn, Debra Winger's bad boy rebound lover, drinks a good portion of a bottle of Mezcal and then eats the worm in a most dramatic fashion, Mezcal dripping down his face and chest. I demanded Patrick emulate Glenn's performance precisely. 

I'm not going to pretend it was exactly the same as watching the movie, but Patrick did a good job grossing out the crowd by wiggling the worm in his teeth while wearing an oversized straw sombrero. Then he swallowed it. I must say, Ocho de Mayo has it all over Cinco de Mayo.