I am a bad chewer. Sometimes I just forget to chew. Or, I'm just not coordinated enough to handle all of the action in my mouth necessary for eating some days. Today I forgot to chew a miniature Matzo Cracker. Those hard-as-a-rock hexagon-shaped crackers were donated to our food pantry and I stole them. I steal from the poor sometimes. Technically, it's not stealing. When different kinds of food comes into the pantry, I put them in a milk crate and set it outside the office. It's the freebie box and anybody's welcome to its treasures: boxes of cook & serve pudding that look like they could be from the '70s, dented and label-free cans, banged up boxes, lonely packets of cream of wheat separated from their box, home-canned jams, sardines, octopus... Someday I may create a top-ten list of interesting and different food pantry donations. Leslie has file-cabinet of fame with extra-special items we ran across. So, anyway, the matso crackers were destined for the freebie box. I just omitted the middle man and pocketed them. I'm anybody too.



I must have swallowed too early, because all of a sudden I had a very uncomfortable feeling in my esophagus. The pain set in as it oozed down the muscle slowly. I tried to melt it with the soup I had brought to accompany it, but this is no Saltine. This is Jewish food. It doesn't budge easily. After five-ten minutes (it's hard to keep track of time during an emergency) of fierce uncomfort, it wiggled it's way down enough for me to throw away the emergency post-it I wrote:


I have a cracker in my throat.

I can breathe for now, but if I

do the choking sign, please

quickly remember your CPR

training. -Melissa