#FTK, A Recap & Commentary on the Walkathon Dares
The annual Walk-A-Thon here at Casady raises money for Oklahoma University's Children Hospital. Last year, the school accumulated 20,000 dollars for the institution. One way they raise these funds is through outlandish dares. Each year classmates challenge one another, and once the dare is accepted by both the darer and the dare-ee, the dare is submitted to the official Casady Walk-A-Thon dares Instagram account (@walkathon_dares). Here you can find every submission catalogued with a picture of the contestant. Once the student body matches the dare's price, it must be preformed!This year there was plenty to see! Right out of the gate, Gabby Lee (sophomore) licked whipped cream from Ross Harrison's (junior) hairy armpit. Nicole Jia (junior), a member of the student council, applied the dessert topping multiple times before it finally stuck. Yum! Luckily, Gabby took it like a champ, gratefully saying, "it wasn't bad; I just tasted the whipped cream." Soon after we were on to the next wacky test. Could Abby Robinson and Kaitlyn Barthell (sophomore and junior) eat jelly beans successfully from the sweaty runner's foot of Jack Ryan (junior)? Abby had her rightful doubts, admitting, "it's for the kids so I'm really excited about it, but I'm a little nauseous!" The task was slightly more difficult than imagined. Kaitlyn exclaimed, "They're so far down! They're not coming out!" Robinson, having completed the dare first, guided Barthell advising her to "suck on them." Barthell followed along until she confessed, "I bit his toes!" Robinson encouraged her to finish saying, "c'mon Kaitlyn! Only two more!" Later Barthell revealed, "There's this taste in my mouth - like feet and jelly beans!"After a few more laps taken around the lake, they shifted to the second round of dares. Keziah Catania (freshman) was due to swallow half a stick of butter. She was very apprehensive as her name boomed through the DJ's speakers instructing her to report to the dares booth saying, "Nope...I'm nervous, I don't want to get the butter in my teeth!" The task took a good amount of time, but for a tiny girl she sure can consume a whole lot of sodium! At the end of the school day, during sports, Coach T wouldn't allow her to finish high jump practice due to what she had just ingested hours before. Once Catania could recall the horror without puking, she described, "the worst part was swallowing. It's very chewy, like gum kind of. That's when I wanted to throw up!" Casey Denny (senior) stepped up to the plate licking some more butter off of her friend Jay Bozalis's (senior) unshaven thigh. It must not have been too gruesome as Denny affirmed, "it was yummy!"During the closing ceremonies was when the real "hairy" dares were completed. Jack Ryan was back with us again from running half his marathon and ready to shave his head! "I would do it for five [dollars], it's just hair!" Ryan professed. This must have been, at the best, refreshing because he still had 13 or so laps remaining! Just behind this haircut Ryan Callahan (junior) was really feeling the pain, having stripped the wax off his chest several times before the hair and all was completely removed. "Ryan has the strongest chest hair of all time!" the DJ exclaimed. Up next was Edward Cohn (junior). His challenge: a leg wax. Cohn was a little "stressed" as Caroline Mullins (junior) wrote in her snapchat post, as she included film of Cohn begging for "something to bite on." Cohn admitted soon after, "it hurt very very bad, no good, no good!"Why go through all this agony? The popular hashtag, #FTK, became a motivational statement for all being chanted by the student body to support their classmates. The meaning? For the kids.