Among the various dumb "challenges" kids these days are trying is something called the "Paqui One Chip Challenge," wherein one eats one chip - one - that is, shall we say, seasoned to be a challenge. Here's how the company describes the heat rating of the one chip:

We do not have an official Scoville rating for the chip itself, however the seasoning used in the chip contains two of the hottest peppers currently available. Carolina Reaper Peppers, which are around 1.7 million Scoville Units and Naga Viper Pepper which around 1.4 million Scoville Units.

Now, there is an allegation that the challenge is responsible for the death of a Massachusetts teenager.

Harris Wolobah, a healthy 14-year-old from Worcester, Massachusetts, tragically died last Friday, hours after eating a single ultra-spicy tortilla chip seasoned with two of the hottest peppers in the world.

The teen's mother, Lois Wolobah, reportedly picked up her son from school that day after getting a call from the nurse that he was sick. She arrived to see him clutching his stomach and took him home. About two hours later, he lost consciousness and was rushed to the hospital, where he died.

The teen had told his mother that he had eaten a Paqui chip—The 2023 Paqui One Chip Challenge chip, to be exact. Each chip is sold individually, wrapped in a foil pouch and packaged in a coffin-shaped box adorned with a skull, snakes, and a Grim Reaper. The box contains the challenge rules, which dare consumers to eat the whole chip and "wait as long as possible before drinking or eating anything"—and, of course, post reactions on social media.

The company, in response, is removing the chip from the market:

On Thursday, the maker of the Paqui chip—Amplify Snack Brands, a subsidiary of the Hershey Company—announced that it was taking the potentially deadly chip off shelves.

The chip was intended only for adults and carried clear warnings, the company said in a statement. It was not intended for "children or anyone sensitive to spicy foods or who has food allergies, is pregnant or has underlying health conditions."

I won't go into the possibility of the chip causing this tragic loss; I will only mention that our hearts go out to the family that lost a child. But the chip challenge does indeed come with ample warnings, including the ones mentioned above, about it being intended only for adults and people with no digestive sensitivities. How do I know this?

Because I took the One Chip Challenge myself, in 2022. (Yes, I know.) A friend of mine had tried it and lasted a minute and 45 seconds before downing a quart of milk. I made it to two minutes and ten seconds.

Let me attempt to describe it for you:

After opening the box and examining the dark blue chip, I reckoned that the best way to approach this would be to get it over with quick, so I put the whole chip in my mouth, crunched down, and swallowed. At first, it didn't seem that bad; no worse than plenty of spicy Tex-Mex I've eaten. Well, I thought, that wasn't so bad.

Then it hit me, as though Zeus had cast a thunderbolt into my mouth. My eyes started to water and my nose ran. I felt as though someone had poured reactor coolant on my tongue. I was in a Zoom chat with my friend who had tried it before (because what's the point of doing something stupid unless you do it where your buddies can watch?) and he yelled out, "Don't rub your eyes!" So, at least, I managed to dodge that agony, but the chip was just getting started.

I'm sure giving birth could not have been any more painful than eating this chip. The flavor, detectable at the start, was quickly dashed away by waves of pain. You could have set off a grenade in my mouth and I wouldn't have noticed it. My esophagus was screaming at me, "You idiot, this is way outside operating specs!"

My buddy, as I said, made it to a minute and 45 seconds. I was in agony, but he was watching, and I had to outlast him, or else all would be for nothing. I gagged, I whined, I sucked in cold air trying desperately to ease the pain until finally, at the two minutes and ten seconds mark, I poured a pint of whipping cream into my mouth. My digestive system was out of sorts for a couple of days afterward.

Supposedly, with age comes wisdom. This act of mine, if it accomplished nothing else, cast some doubt on that notion. But unlike some, I'm capable of learning from a mistake, and so I did keep the box (pictured above) as a reminder that, as my father used to say, "we grow too soon old and too late smart."

Stupidity takes many forms, of course. But this is one that is, perhaps, too easily avoided. After that experience I can see how the chip can be potentially dangerous for a child, or for someone with gastric issues, maybe even those that have not yet been diagnosed. Perhaps Amplify did the right thing in removing the One Chip Challenge from the market.

Now, kids can go back to eating Tide pods.