#35 Eat a Tequila Worm

This bucket list item was completed on 6^th December 2013 in New Plymouth, New Zealand.

After finishing a few months of travel throughout New Zealand, I was running out of money and it was time to find a job. Kyle and I headed back up to New Plymouth to try to find engineering work. I was not focused on any specific industry. Instead I just knocked on the door of any place that said they hired engineers.

In 2013, the oil & gas industry was booming and that meant jobs were easy to find. We started job hunting on the Monday and were both given contracts to the same engineering firm on the Friday. We were stoked about how quickly things progressed and before we knew it we were working at our new “big boy jobs”.

Although we had our new fancy jobs, we were still very much in party mode from university. We met a few German’s and a few American’s who were in New Plymouth working as au pairs. They were a few years younger and very much in party mode, like us.

Needless to say, we partied quite a bit for those first few months, at least once every weekend. One weekend, I came up with the idea of a “shotluck”. It’s the same concept as a potluck but instead of food, everyone brings a bottle of spirits.

Kyle, Sheldon and I went down to the bottle store a few days before to get prepared for the shotluck. That’s where I found some tequila with a worm inside of it. They also had a small 50 ml bottle that had about 10 worms inside, so I bought that as well.

Kyle rummaged around the store until he found the cheapest, nastiest looking bottle of rum he could find. Sheldon managed to find vodka in a bottle shaped like a fire extinguisher. I think it is safe to say that we were not going for a classy shotluck, but rather one that punished those who attended. Not sure why we did that but at the time we thought it was a good idea.

We kicked off the shotluck one Friday after work. The girls each brought over a bottle, so we had a lot of alcohol on hand. We established the rules that you could drink whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted but communal shots were taken every 30 minutes. All our names where put into a hat and then every 30 minutes we would each draw a name out of the hat. We had to take a shot of the alcohol, which was brought by the person who’s name you pulled out of the hat. Also, if it was your first shot of tequila, you were required to eat one of the worms.

This really came down to luck of the draw. Unfortunately, Sheldon picked my name out of the hat and had to drink a shot of tequila 3 out of the first 4 times. Most people had a varied mix of alcohol, so it wasn’t too bad. To be honest I think the rum that Kyle bought was worse than the tequila. People were dreading that more than my tequila.

The other thing we did was keep a tally of the shots that each person had done. This way we knew how many shots of each kind of alcohol that every person had. It was named the “Puke and Rally Tally” because it was inevitable that we were not going to be able to stomach all the alcohol. Oh, to be young and stupid…

By the end of the night the tally was full, and it was getting hard for any of us to form sentences. I can’t say this was the most mature thing we had ever done but at the time we were thoroughly enjoying ourselves… Until the next day. We all woke up with terrible hangovers and instantly began regretting the idea of the shotluck.

It was a great idea, we had a lot of fun doing it and it helped me cross another one off my bucket list, so I will remember it forever. However, for as long as I shall live, I will never repeat the shotluck. Sometimes great ideas shouldn’t be repeated.

Have you eaten a tequila worm? Let me know in the comments below.

Make sure to read my next post, [#35 Lesson] Sometimes Great Ideas Shouldn’t be Repeated, which discusses the lesson learned by completing this item. Want to be notified when new blog posts are uploaded? Subscribe below.