Don’t eat foods outside of their natural habitat

• Zareen
• If you see this in the wild, alert the proper authorities.

It started as a joke — the sausage puffs or pigs in a blanket individually wrapped in plastic bags at room temperature by a mostly clean microwave in the hotel lobby. But jokes have a way of being repeated, even when not funny, and eventually morphing into dares. And while men may age and choose to eliminate those activities that offer mortal risk, we seem to still excel at accepting the same misbegotten challenges that have been proffered since elementary school.

And so I found myself slathering yellow deli mustard on a Styrofoam plate and waiting for 20 seconds to pass and the inevitable shrill beep that suggested this was really happening.