Today is National Hot Dog Day. Over the years I have devoted a lot of ink to hot dogs but I won’t re-hash the many mentions tonight—you can just read about them here (it is pretty entertaining).

So while I won’t re-hash the old, I will update everyone with three extremely brief hot dog stories and developments from the past 12 months…

By the way, I really love hot dogs!

– I took Beau to a 250th America celebration in June. I packed us picnic lunches as it was an outdoor event that occurred over the course of lunchtime. When he saw I had packed him a Subway sandwich that had a topping he didn’t like, he started to throw a fit. I was content to let him just feast on the chip but he insisted on a hot dog. Since there was a local hot dog vendor close to us, I decided to comply with his request.

I stood in line and eventually made it to the front and ordered him a marked up hot dog. Despite the cost, it looked and smelled great—way better than anything that comes in an Oscar Mayer package. In fact, if I didn’t have to put ketchup on it to appease Beau, I think I would have ate it myself and accepted the scorn when I returned empty-handed. Alas, I didn’t do that. When I presented Beau with the hot dog, you should have seen the look of disgust on his face. Although grill lines indicate a hot dog that was cooked right, my son apparently considered them to be the plague.

Knowing this probably wasn’t going to end well, I told him to at the very least try it. He took the smallest nibble and spit it out. What a waste of time, money, and food.

Beau hanging with some colonial men at the “Celebrating America’s 250th: Picnic in the Park” event at Balfour Park in Spokane Valley. This was a few minutes before the lunch disaster.

Two more super quick hot dog anecdotes…

– Although Beau won’t eat a hot dog with grill lines, he will certainly eat one surrounded by sour candy. When we attended a Gonzaga Prep football game this past fall, Sloan and Beau took advantage of the free hot dogs given away prior to kickoff. Instead of topping his frank with ketchup, he topped it with Sour Patch Kids. I will take the “Worst Dad of the Year Award” for actually letting him eat it.

Beau’s candy hot dog. He would later sprinkle Nerds on it too.

– And finally a positive story about hot dogs. Back in August, my brother caught something special from the sky during a Seattle Mariners game. If you have never heard of the team’s Hot Dogs from Heaven promotion let me enlighten you. Once each game, hot dogs that are attached to parachutes are dropped from the upper deck onto a lucky lower deck section. The cards aligned during our Seattle visit and my brother used his height to snag one of the dogs that floated over our row of seats.

My brother holds the hot dog he caught during the “Hot Dogs from Heaven” promotion.

Hope everyone takes some time to celebrate today by eating a hot dog. Here’s to more hot dog experiences (hopefully all positive) between now and the 2027 National Hot Dog Day. Don’t Blink.