You know that terrible feeling of trying to do something with your non-dominant hand?
Maybe you're a righty, like most of the world, and you're trying to throw a ball with your
left hand only to wind up embarrassing yourself as your throw comes up about twenty yards
too short.
Trying to use your non-dominant hand sure is hard and awkward, but what about using
no hands at all?
Once again we're turning to our staff lab rat and challenging him to find out the answers
to things we think about all the time, but don't feel like discovering ourselves.
Now get ready for our newest Challenge: can't use my hands for 72 hours!
Challenge Start: Alright, this one's different and not just
because it as usual is going to make my life very, very difficult- although on second thought,
guess that's not that different- but because this time the challenge comes with incentives.
A while ago I mentioned that Infographics was turning my challenges into a sort of crazy,
weird Japanese game show, and this challenge is no different.
I have five cash incentives to undertake five different 'mini challenges', and for each
one I complete I get $200 bucks.
So that's an extra grand on top of my regular salary for each challenge I complete.
How hard could it be?!
Well.
Not gonna lie, some of these are gonna be tough, but you're gonna have to stay tuned
to find out.
So ok, first things first.
I can't use my hands for anything, which means I'll be relying on the girlfriend for most
things, like feeding me, dressing me, opening the front door, walking the dog... yeah, it's
all hands on deck- or maybe just her hands on deck for this challenge.
Good thing for that extra $1,000 on the line.
Guess in a way Infographics is sort of paying her salary too, because she's gonna have to
be deeply involved.
So I got a pair of padded handcuffs for this challenge, because I've used regular handcuffs
out in the real world plenty in my old life and let me tell you: they hurt bad if you
lean on them the wrong way or get jerked around.
You can easily break a wrist as well, so I'll be wearing cuffs with some padding.
Getting dressed was pretty much as hard as I thought it would.
I'm a simple guy, I like clean jeans with a simple solid white or black t-shirt and
a nice, but comfortable pair of leather shoes.
It's a simple style, but have you ever tried to put on jeans without hands?
It's basically impossible.
The t-shirt was also completely impossible, and I had to slip out of the handcuffs so
the girlfriend could feed my arms into the shirt.
I pretended to be an ancient king, and called her my wench and maidservant as she was putting
my pants on, which earned me the dirtiest look in the world and the privilege of eating
my cereal on my own.
Oh, she poured the cereal for me and even the milk, but then dropped the bowl in front
of me and said, “now you can be your own wench” and just walked away.
You know what's hard?
Eating cereal without a spoon and no hands.
It was basically a gross, loud, slurping affair and I almost drowned/choked to death after
inhaling a cheerio that went down my windpipe, quickly followed by some milk.
Despite me choking to death and the fact that with my hands cuffed behind my back I couldn't
possibly give myself the heimlich maneuver, the girlfriend just looked over her shoulder
at me from the couch and shrugged her shoulders.
After my coughing fit I asked her if she would seriously have let me choke to death just
because I called her my wench while she was dressing me, and she very calmly said, “Not
to death.
I'd just let you pass out for a bit.”
And that, dear audience, is true love.
Ok, first challenge of my no hands challenge: grocery shopping, but I have to do it alone.
The girlfriend can't come with me.
Luckily there's a grocery store just a few blocks from our house, so getting there wasn't
a problem.
I think Infographics thought this would be a great way to get me to shop clenching a
shopping basket in my teeth and using my feet to knock products off the shelf, but you know
what?
Infographics severely underestimated me, and they underestimated the greed of the Girl
Scouts.
Before I left the house I had the girlfriend tuck $40 into my shoe along with my debit
card, I figured I would find someone and pay them to do the grocery shopping for me.
Now in order to not look like a total freak, I didn't wear the handcuffs in public.
I just stuck my hands in my pocket and kept them there.
When I got there, I spotted a troupe of girl scouts between 10 and 16 years old peddling
their cookies like street corner drug dealers.
You ever run into girl scouts selling cookies?
They are AGGRESSIVE in their sales pitches, and that's the kind of greed I was counting
on.
I managed to talk to one of the older girls off on the side and showed her the money in
my shoe, telling her she could keep all $40 for herself if she just helped me buy a few
things in the store.
I explained I couldn't use my hands because of an internet challenge thing, doing my best
to make it sound believable- even though it of course was not a lie.
Still, YOU try convincing a stranger you're not a pervert or crazy person when you ask
them to do your shopping for you and to reach into your shoe for the money.
The teenage girl looked incredibly skeptical, but I could tell she wanted that $40.
On a side note, this whole thing probably looked REAL shady, but she agreed and I put
my foot up on a picnic table so she could grab her money and my debit card.
I guess she could've run off right then and there, but she didn't so kudos to you girl
scouts for instilling good values in your troops.
Though, maybe do a better job on the whole not talking to strangers thing.
Twenty minutes later grocery shopping was done, some teenage girl was $40 richer, and
I was walking home with a reusable tote bag of groceries in my teeth.
I'm not a complete idiot, so I made sure we didn't buy anything heavy- don't feel like
having half the teeth in my mouth ripped out.
Of course I did also forget the girl still had my debit card so the girlfriend had to
drive over in a hurry to retrieve it after I got home.
Alright, first challenge done, $200 richer- or I guess technically $160.
Not bad for an hour's work.
I was feeling plucky, so I decided to take on the second mini challenge: do my laundry-
all of it.
That sounds simple right?
What's so hard about doing laundry?
Well, next time you go to do your laundry, imagine doing all the steps without your hands.
Luckily we have a washer and dryer unit in our apartment, and the washer happens to be
one of those front-loading ones, not the top-loading which would have been all but impossible.
First I had to drag our laundry basket to the laundry area, which is tucked into a large
walk-in closet in our kitchen.
I basically had to bite down on the edge of the basket and just drag it down the hallway,
and I swear I'm going to lose a tooth by the end of this.
After a very long struggle I managed to get the basket into the laundry room.
By now I had started using my feet a lot, I kind of have a monkey grip with my toes,
so opening the washing machine doors wasn't that hard.
Putting the clothes in was a different matter altogether though, and I eventually had to
use my teeth again, and let me tell you, there's nothing more gross than loading a bunch of
sweaty exercise clothes from you and your girlfriend into a washing machine by mouth.
The soap was a problem.
We use liquid soap, so I had to unscrew it by smashing it against the machine with my
body and then using my teeth to twist the top open.
Then I realized I'd never be able to pour the soap into the lid to get an accurate measurement,
so I just sort of grabbed the handle with my teeth and 'splashed' soap into the machine.
This, naturally, got soap EVERYWHERE, not just the machine, leaving our little laundry
room a soapy, slippery mess upon which I would promptly slip and fall straight on my butt.
Good news though was that the laundry was in, soaped up- along with me and everything
else- and starting it was as simple as using my feet to kick the selector dial and then
push the start button.
At this point, the girlfriend who had been listening to all the commotion, walked in
and immediately facepalmed, realizing she would have to clean up the mess.
A half hour later, I used my feet and teeth once more to move the clothes from the washer
to the front-loading dryer, and started that bad boy up.
Then it was as simple as biting the clothes and dragging them back into the hamper, at
which point I decided I had had enough of household chores and collapsed on the couch
exhausted.
Second challenge done, another $200 earned.
And all it took was splashing laundry soap all over the floor and washing machine and
me nearly breaking my coccyx.
Alright by this time it was time for a late lunch, and this meant the girlfriend had to
feed me.
We had made amends over the breakfast incident, but she thought it'd be funny to feed me like
I was three by pretending the food was a truck or an airplane.
I'm so glad we don't shoot this show live action, because I'd never allow this to be
published for the world to see.
I decided to take it easy on challenges for the rest of the day, and hit up challenge
three first thing on day 2.
Challenge three was... well, unusual, and more of a challenge for the girlfriend than
for me.
You ready?
Challenge three: Do your girlfriend's makeup and go outside together.
Yep, I had to do her makeup without using my hands.
To say that this ended in disaster would be an understatement.
Now, I know nothing about makeup so I had to follow her lead.
Luckily the girlfriend doesn't like to wear much makeup, but that doesn't mean this ended
up any less a nightmare.
First was moisturizer for her face to “prepare for the rest of the makeup” as she put it.
How do you apply moisturizer without any hands?
Well, I licked it, getting a glob on my tongue, and then licked it onto her face...
ALL over her face.
She was basically ready to quit right then and there, but I reminded her that $200 was
on the line and I swore she could have every dollar.
By the way, moisturizer tastes terrible.
Next was the primer, which I guess helps makeup to stay on longer?
Either way it's a lot like moisturizer, so you guessed it, on to the tongue it went and
then straight on her face.
Primer also tastes terrible.
For someone I kiss and make out with regularly, the girlfriend sure was making a fuss about
me licking all over her face, and I think our dog was confused since he typically isn't
allowed to lick people.
I mean it's ok if he licks us, we just don't want him to learn to lick so much that he
does it to everyone who comes over.
Either way, he was clearly getting mixed signals here.
Alright, next was foundation, which the girlfriend warned me to “use only a little because
I don't need much and it's very expensive.”
So I grabbed her brush with my teeth and started painting her face with it, getting foundation
literally everywhere- her mouth, her eyes, her hair, myself, yeah... everywhere.
The girlfriend banned me from touching her very expensive concealer after that, so we
went straight to eyes.
First was the eye paint stuff, I forget what it is.
But basically it was the same story as the foundation, brush in mouth and then start
painting.
Only it's kind of hard to be precise, so while I tried to give her sexy smokey eyes, instead
I gave her sexy smokey eyes, forehead, cheeks, and nose.
Next was her lashes, using that weird brush thing- again, I forget what it's called.
But this one ended with me practically poking out both her eyes, so we cut that short with
like only half her lashes fluffed up and looking all sexy.
Lipstick was next, and if you don't think that went disastrously then you clearly haven't
been paying attention.
I meant to give her a sexy shade of red and ended up making her look like the joker.
Again, it's VERY hard to be precise when you're using only your mouth to apply products.
So, the girlfriend who had not been allowed to look in the mirror until now, promptly
took one look in the mirror and practically screamed.
Then she realized how much of her very expensive makeup I had wasted and screamed for real.
She flat out refused to leave the house and immediately marched off to take a shower.
Challenge most definitely failed, and also I think I owe her most of what I'm making
off this challenge.
Alright, the next challenge was a solo challenge, and I figured I could do this one without
causing another disaster.
More of a physical challenge, it was simple: swim 100 meters with no hands.
This one reminds me of my old days in the military, and swimming without the use of
your hands is something we all had to learn to do, so needless to say I was pretty confident
about this one.
I slapped on the handcuffs and had the girlfriend- who wasn't yet speaking to me- help me into
a pair of shorts and into the pool I went.
With the girlfriend acting as judge, we measured our apartment complex's pool, which is actually
pretty big for our little block of apartments, and determined that four laps, going from
one end to the other and back again being one lap, would be pretty close to 100 meters,
the olympic standard.
Swimming without the use of your hands is actually not that difficult, you just have
to learn to use your feet like flippers and it helps to keep them pressed together so
you have more surface area.
Also there was no time limit, so I could take my time.
I was starting on lap three when I realized that I may have trained to do this in the
past, but I was definitely NOT in the same physical fitness level I was in back then.
I mean, I'm in good shape, but like back in those days we were all practically in olympic
athlete shape.
Which apparently is exactly the level of fitness you need to complete a 100 meter swim without
your hands, because I started what I like to call, “gracefully drowning” as I refused
to give up.
The girlfriend called it plain old drowning and jumped in to drag me to the side of the
pool, cussing me out for being hardheaded and refusing to quit even when my head was
more under the water then above it.
So, yeah, challenge failed.
2 for 4, not great.
I took the rest of the second day off to recover from my near drowning, and dinner was slightly
less humiliating because we had soup, which I could mostly drink through a large straw.
Alright, day 3, and I gotta tell you, I was stoked for the last challenge.
This one was simple, or at least supposed to be: fix a full meal with no hands.
It was a great way to say thank you to the girlfriend for putting up with me the last
three days, or at least it was supposed to be.
It predictably, became a disaster.
I decided on something simple, mac and cheese.
I make great homemade cheese sauce using butter, three different types of cheese, and milk,
but getting it all into a mixing bowl with no hands was... challenging.
I ended up dropping the milk, spraying half a gallon of milk all over the floor and our
counters, and promptly did the same with the box of macaroni I was trying to pour into
the pot.
At this point the girlfriend stepped in and said challenge over, and that she wasn't cleaning
up this mess.
So, I guess challenge five failed, along with the challenge overall because she was serious
about challenge being over.
Instead I spent the evening cleaning the kitchen, though I did end up making macaroni and cheese,
the right way, using my hands.
They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, but believe me, the same goes
for women, because as annoyed as the girlfriend was with me for basically destroying our house,
nearly drowning, and wasting tons of her expensive makeup, once she had some hot warm gooey goodness
in her belly she was very forgiving.
Ready for more challenges?
Check out this challenge here: blindfolded for 3 days challenge!
Or check out this other video instead!