Sometimes you just bite off more than you can chew.
I think every one of us remembers the first time he or she nearly suffocated to death as a child.
Mine was while eating a bowl of Campbell’s beans and franks. I must have been in grade school, let’s say six years old, and I had perfected a method to eating this particular soup. The beans were acceptable – nuisances to be tolerated – but the franks were the raison d’être. In the handful of summers I’d lived through, I’d grown mature enough to develop a sense of will power, an appreciation of “saving the best for last,” so unlike my younger brother, who went for the quick fix, I deftly maneuvered my spoon around the franks until all the beans were gone.
And then joy, accomplishment and anticipation intersected in my tiny heart. Those two little mealy cylinders, spattered in their reddish-brown sauce, lay there gazing up at me. No longer camouflaged in the company of their tiny siblings, they nakedly huddled together in the middle of the bowl.
My next step was to slice each in half with the edge of my spoon – drawing out the sweet moment as long as I could – and pop each half into my mouth one by one. I’d savor each tiny morsel, no less delicious (in a way, even more so) for having nearly reached room temperature. Then I’d swallow them down.
Or try to.
One evening I didn’t quite get that far.
With my brother seated next to me at the table, and my parents standing and talking, grownup-like, in the kitchen, my throat clenched in an effort to swallow. Nothing happened.
Fascinating, these franks, about the diameter of a child’s windpipe.
I clenched again. Nothing.
I didn’t quite understand what was happening, but some ancient recess of my brain alerted me that it was time to panic.
I jumped from the chair and tried to shriek.
My mom and I have differing accounts of what happened next. She claims that, with an audible pop, the wayward demi-frank launched itself from my mouth and flew across the kitchen.
I remember, very vividly, the sensation of the frank landing slimily on my tongue. With that, my shriek was finally unleashed, but only for a second. Once I realized I was okay, I turned and began walking back to my chair, chewing happily.
What my parents saw was their eldest son running into the kitchen in terror, chirping loudly, then exiting casually.
I remember my mom hovering over me, worried, asking me what happened. And I remember waving it off. “Nothing. I’m fine.” This is how I thought adults acted – nice and cool.
(I recall a similar line of logic from what must have been my fourth birthday party. I had already seen several instances on television of people’s eyes moistening at moments of extreme joy. I didn’t quite understand why that happened, but I thought I’d try it out. As my family sang “Happy Birthday,” I burst into tears and wailed, startling and bewildering all present.)
My mother finally managed to pry out of her mature little son what happened. I don’t remember the admonishment I must have received afterwards, the warning to chew thoroughly. Me, I had another few frank halves to relish.
• • •
That’s the only time I’ve ever had something caught in my trachea. At some point, I switched to the trachea’s less dangerous partner, the esophagus. I have trouble sometimes with food going down the right pipe.
It’s usually bread. I’ll be in a hurry, or just not paying attention, and I’ll swallow too much bread. It will expand about halfway down and plant itself as an agonizing lump behind my sternum. There it sits, immovable, giving me ample time to curse my own stupidity, and to remember the dozens of times throughout my life that I have vowed never to let this happen again.
Washing it down with a drink does not help. The clog is watertight, and I can feel liquid land and accumulate on top of the bolus of bread. Forcing it down with more food is an even worse idea.
No, what happens next is an elaborate ritual of standing up as straight as I can, puffing out my chest, and hopping lightly up and down in an attempt to create some kind of low-tech artificial peristalsis. Meanwhile, tears well up in my eyes, my jaw clenches, and my breath comes out in tiny, anguished exhalations. Sometimes hiccups will stop by to make it a real party.
If I’m at work when this happens, victimized by a sandwich wolfed down during a stressful, hurried lunch at my desk, I will often retire to a restroom stall. What I need is solitude and quiet, not some co-worker rapping on my cubicle door and saying, “Hey Dave, did you get a chance to oh my god are you all right?”
One of my worst instances of this happened at a girlfriend’s apartment. She could tell I was in pain, and she kept circling me to ask if I was okay. I assured her that I was, and I tried to explain that what I needed was just to be left alone to wait for it to pass. But she doggedly tried to comfort me, or ask if I needed an ambulance, or inquire if I was really, really sure I was all right. She’d never had it happen to her (I don’t think I have ever talked to anyone else who’s experienced it), and I appreciated how startling my grimacing must have looked, but eventually I had to lock myself in her bathroom to suffer in peace.
When at long last the food slipped down into my stomach, I emerged and apologized for freaking her out.
“If it was some kind of emergency, and you needed help, you’d tell me, right?” she asked, apparently afraid that I’d rather have died than accepted her assistance.
“I’m fine, really,” I told her in my most adult fashion. But I’d internalized the maternal admonishment: Chew thoroughly!
The Banquet of Life is a bi-weekly look at one man's life through the food he eats.
