Actually, You Can Almost Die Choking on a Pretzel

Yes, I know I've been known to scoff about the president's first-year pretzel episode where, near the beginning of The Great War on Terror, he choked on a pretzel (ok, I'm still a bit dubious), fell down and got all bruised, and unconscious.

For me, the moment occurred by scarfing down Ritz baked Snack Mix (in cheddar). I'm typing away on the glories of secure password creation, pop a tiny amount of mix in my mouth and promptly sneezed.

The result was that one of the mini (but not quite mini enough) pretzel sticks wedged itself between the back roof of my mouth and my throat. Still sneezing, I damaged myself somewhat when the two sharpish ends of pretzel drove into my soft tissues during the sneezive (yeah, I'm making up words, tough) concussion. I yelped, somewhat loosening said snack javelin only to - apparently - wedge it in, on, around, or near my windpipe.

Unfortunately, the salt with said snack only made the sneezing and coughing worse, and soon, I had the entire stick, still intact, kinda stuck in my esophagus.

I reach for my coffee cup, but it's empty. I try to call out the door to my partner, but he is doing evil things to compost and cannot hear me. The neighbor's dog was around though, so I whispered (all I could do) for her to go for help. Gimli (her name), however, just kept staring at me resentfully (as in "How come you were eating food without me?").

Finally, I got the Ritz snack fully out of my body (don't ask) and then, in recounting the sad, stupid story to an acquaintance was told that what I really needed to do was sue Nabisco for snack malpractice. No, I don't think the person was kidding.

As much as I could use an infusion of cash, somehow I don't think suing a corporation strictly for my own negligence and stupidity quite fits my life plans.