The contests were a weird little bonding experience for the two women. They were never planned. The competitions were never consistent. It was more of a ‘anything you can do, I can do better’ sort of thing. Once Tom found out—when he happened to walk in on his mother burping the alphabet and his wife chugging some sort of carbonated drink in anticipation of her attempt—he encouraged them. He thought it was funny, and then he started keeping the official score, and no amount of cajoling by either of them could convince him to do a little creative editing in their favor.