Last night I placed three Motrin’s in the palm of my hand and nonchalantly popped them into my mouth. The instant those tiny orange pills flew into my gaping maw I felt something strange, as if one of the pills stuck to the side of my throat. ”No biggie,” I thought as I took a swig of water and swallowed thinking that water would dislodge the offending pill, but that strange feeling was still there.
When I finally took a breath I felt an odd sensation, one I had never felt before. Something was rattling around in my windpipe, bouncing off the walls of my trachea like a pebble bouncing wildly inside an empty tin can.
And that’s when my body took over with a commanding and possessive “get the frak out of my way!” mentality, doubling me over and expelling air in a desperate effort to remove this unwanted foreign object from my throat.
At first nothing came up. Then again, and with even more force, I tried to jettison this unwanted hitchhiker, but that stubborn pill nestled in an inconvenient way a few inches below my jaw line. By now I’m panicking, wondering what would happen to me if I’m unable to exude this object from my throat. What if it settles into my lungs? Will an operation be required? The mind was reeling a mile a minute with the bizarre and the unsettling.
With a third and mighty effort that orange invader miraculously shot out of my mouth and bounced off of the floor, eventually coming to a wet, sliding stop under the bed. My chest and shoulder muscles felt oddly pained with the effort of ejecting that cursed pill. I slumped against the nearest wall and slid to the ground, exhausted from the previous harrowing moments. For the next 30 minutes I forcefully exhaled air with a deep and disturbing dry-heaving coughing sound as I tried to expel water that had managed to follow that pill into my windpipe.
I’m sure I could come up with a snarky joke here, but after having experienced what it’s like to choke on something as stupid and innocuous as a pill I can’t imagine making light of such a serious subject.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make a ham sandwich for tomorrow’s lunch…
I had a friend who used to live in an apartment which was situated above a concert hall. Nearly every night the walls of his place would vibrate to the sound of whatever activity was taking place in that cavernous entertainment complex below, and no amount of sound dampening material could muffle the noise.
Depending on the night you could sit in his living room and listen (quite clearly) to either a rock concert, comedy tour, self-help seminar, business convention or a play. My friend used to say that if life is a stage then his apartment is the dressing room.
This friend of mine wasn’t the highest achiever in the world. He had a low paying job down at the Jiffy Lube. He was one of those guys who would skulk about in the little room under the pavement waiting for cars to stop above so he could remove the oil pan screw to drain the oil, but he really didn’t mind that hot, cramped room because his job afforded him the opportunity to occasionally take a toke from a small pocket inhaler he used to carry around with him at all times.
To say that my friend was a stoner would be like saying Ronald McDonald “sorta liked” hamburgers; a blatant understatement. If there ever was a moment when he wasn’t baked I never saw it.
Luckily for my friend he was one of those “lucid” stoners who could talk about any subject in depth and keep you entertained for hours, unlike this guy who I can’t, for the life of me, understand one bit:
Man, I miss my friend. He eventually quit smoking, moved up to Oregon and became a lawyer. He now works as a public defender, which both does and does not surprise me one bit…
Bob had been quietly tapping away on his laptop in the cubicle next to me when he suddenly broke the silence by muttering to himself, “I want a snack but I’m trying to be good.”
“What’s that?” I asked, unsure if he was talking to me.
“I said I want a snack but I’m trying to stay on my diet. My problem is that a ‘snack’ to me means a ‘meal’ but all I really need is a bite or two of something,” he said.
Opening my desk drawer and offering him a few quarters I said, “Why don’t you go to the snack machine?”
“No, thanks,” he said, turning back to his laptop and falling back into his typical quiet work style.
A few minutes later Bob abruptly stopped typing once again, turned to me and asked, “Is a cough drop considered a snack? Because, man…I could really go for a cough drop right about now.”
This is a prime example of what happens to a person when a New Year’s resolution becomes all encompassing that it tears at the very fabric of traditional habits. I’m curious to see how long Bob will be able to stay on his self-imposed diet before cracking under the pressure. The way I see it, if you’re desperate enough to think that a Halls is a valid substitution for your daily Snickers fix, then I’m guessing you’re less than a week away from falling off the diet wagon…
…okay, I take that back. There are worse things, but jury duty ranks quite high on my list of pet peeves, somewhere between cholera and cherry-flavored Robitussin. It’s a perverse form of a lottery system where the players hope that their numbers don’t hit and that their names are not called.
And so I found myself sitting in a large staging area along with two hundred other unlucky souls yesterday morning, hoping that my group number would never get called. The only thing I could do was try to relax in my state-issued hard plastic chair, read my book, and try to ignore the steadily rising temperature of the crowded waiting room. I occasionally stood up to stretch my legs and to purchase an unreasonably expensive soda from the lone food cart allowed within our secured area which was zealously guarded by a flock/murder/crash of sheriff’s deputies who were swimming in oversized bulletproof vests, overly-sensitive metal detectors and padlocked gates.
I was unsure if this show of force was meant to protect us from some imagined evil, or to prevent the jurors from making a desperate run for freedom.
Luckily for us the three cases on the docket either encountered unexpected delays or wound up with plea deals. We were all mercifully excused early in the afternoon, where I spent the rest of the day digging deeper into Snow Crash and playing Oblivion.
And that, my friends, is how I wasted away a perfectly good Thursday.
I enjoyed riding my bike as fast as I could downhill and launching myself off of jumps on the edge of a canyon to see if I could make it to the other side. I would leap off of the roof of the school at lunch with the intent of landing in the dumpster, then in the afternoon ride down the roof of my house on my skateboard. I would rock climb in the middle of the night with my best friends at Joshua Tree. I would paddle out in the middle of a storm into a churning forest of towering fifteen foot choppy waves with the hopes of catching a quick ride back to the shore. Without any prodding I went solo skydiving just to see what it felt like. I would slide down black diamond runs after having just learned how to snowboard. And when I was bored I’d run into Death Valley with no idea where I was going, and with nothing more than a bottle of water and some sunscreen (Devil’s Golf Course!).
I was invincible, with nerves of steel and confidence to match.
But now, with many years having stacking up between then and now, I look at something like this and I can’t help but feel a bit jealous:
Now that I’m a bit older with a career, a wife, and an amazing nine-month-old son I find myself relegated to long trail runs where help is a quick cell phone call away, and once a year I run up and down Mt. Whitney.
I no longer want to launch myself off of precarious precipeces, plunge from great heights, hurl myself out of planes, tempt broken bones or chance death by dehydration.
I now have responsibilities. I have a family to look after. I’m getting older.
And you know what? This is exactly where I want to be.
