RDAU_2026-ISSUE0809_DIGITAL MAGAZINE

BYARD DUNCAN We met two weeks later at an athletic field in Modesto, California, an hour and a half from my home in Oakland. Mellion is sturdily built, with a gravelly laugh and a Clorox-white smile. The thing all the great throwers have, he explained, is an obsession with consis- tency: Throwing is all about repetition and small adjustments that might earn you a tiny edge here or there. “You can’t get too high; you can’t get too low,” he toldme. “You’re gonna have bad throws. That’s why we throw so much in practice. You just try to balance it out—but it’s never a finished product.” Mellion waited for his small class of throwers to wrap up, then took me to a nearby discus field. He instructed me to grasp my rubber chicken by the neck and plant my back foot. I needed to bend my knee and pivot through the big toe, winding up for a sort of hip-powered whipping motion. The goal was to release my chicken at a 45-degree angle as my right arm flew around. I wound up again and again, imagin- ing myself delivering superhero-strength blows to some monstrous vil- lain. Mellion watched closely, occasionally adjusting my posture or reminding me to breathe. It was surprising to wit- ness the seriousness he brought to my task. He was focused on the small details, undaunted by the absurdity. It felt as if I had brought him a puzzle he couldn’t resist trying to solve. After about half an hour of watching me throw, Mellion took out his phone and tapped Everyone (even the chickens) brought a “heads-down seriousness” to the task. reader ’ s digest 118 open its measurement app. He reported the distance: roughly 75 feet. It was well shy of Gürcü’s record, but honestly a lot better than I’d expected. “I think you can break this record,” he said, smiling. He wasn’t alone. A few weeks later, I found myself face-to-face, via Google Meet, with Gürcü himself. It was late at night in Turkey, but he was full of energy—thrilled that someone in the United States had taken an interest in his record setting. He had drunk a cup of coffee after getting off work to pre- pare for our meeting. We began with a review of the Guin- ness ground rules. The rubber chicken could be any size, make and weight as long as it was “commercially available.” The toy couldn’t bemodified in any way, and I had to grip its body, not its neck or head, during my toss. There would be no official Guinness representative at the site of my attempt in Oakland. Instead, I had to invite two witnesses to film the throw, as well as a professional surveyor to measure the distance and slope of the terrain. Then I needed to upload that evidence, along with a cover letter, to the Guinness website. I had been nervous to tell Gürcü I was coming for his record. But when I did, he was elated and eager to talk shop. To maximize my distance, Gürcü explained, I would need a chicken whose weight exceeded 150 grams (about 51/3 ounces) and whose height was short enough that it didn’t catch too much drag in midair. He held up his winning chicken, a 13-inch latex bird with a crimson head and cartoon- ish blue eyes. He’d found it at a local pet shop. As we finished our conversation, Gürcü urged me to stay in touch with questions about technique or chicken dimensions. He followed up with a bar- rage of direct messages on Instagram: words of advice, links to chickens he thought might be up to the task. It was a strange feeling, being lifted up by him and Coach Mellion in this way. Odd to have two strangers in my corner, invested in my trivial quest for dubious renown. It was also sort of contagious. “This is when I actually realize the importance and the magic of Guinness—the value it brings,” Gürcü had told me before we said goodbye. “Through Guinness and the contest, I have something to showmy kids in the future.” IT’S COMMON — fashionable even—for each generation to diagnose its condi- tions as uniquely, ahistorically dire. But could there finally be something to that sentiment for millennials, with the youngest of our cohort turning 30 and the oldest around 45? Like every generation that has come before us, we’re inking an unsteady truce with our own mortality, while also trying to decipher how, exactly, to enter our second acts with dignity. But then there’s also the world to grapple with. A recent survey about Just for Fun rd.com | august/september 2026 119