Would you like a slice of death?

On Saturday night:  I was happily minding my own business, just sitting on the couch and watching a movie with the family.  Mae suggested we share an orange so we paper-rock-scissor’d over who had to peel it (I won).  As she handed me my half, I carefully pulled off a slice and popped it into my mouth.  Little did I know that this orange was especially (and dangerously) juicy.  As I sunk my teeth into it, the overabundance of juice squirted directly into my throat, thus clogging my windpipe.  I couldn’t breathe.  I tried to stay calm, but after so many seconds of not breathing, I may have freaked out a little tiny bit.  My eyes were watering because…well, there was citrus in a hole where there should be air and it was incredibly painful.  I began coughing up little bouts of juice until I could take in tiny breaths of air.  It looked and sounded much like a cat coughing up a hairball.  This continued for quite a while and when I could finally breathe normally, it was still painful for about an hour.

I’m not proud to admit that I nearly drowned on an orange slice, but I feel the need to write it and warn the world.  Has this happened to anybody else?  Is there a support group I could maybe join?  I have squirted orange juice into my eye multiple times and I have come to terms with it.  Sometimes I even wear goggles as a safety precaution, but only if there’s an important event I must attend and want to ensure that one eye is not red and swollen to twice the size of the other eye.  But never in all of the hundreds of oranges I’ve indulged in thus far have I ever nearly drowned like that.  And my poor family just watched in horror; Kenny, ready and prepared to perform the Heimlich maneuver on me, but worried that he would hurt the baby, and Mae asking over and over and over…”Mom?  You okay?  MOM!?!  YOU OKAY?!”  It was terrifying for all. 

Let’s just hope our family never has to endure something as traumatizing as a house fire or a flood.  Heck, even a small wind storm might be too much for us if we can barely make it through snack time.