gaggin'

So I serve my kids lunch today, and I eat a bit of the food myself, and 
apparently I ate it too quickly, because suddenly, as I'm reaching for the 
dishes, I realize I can't breathe and I'm choking and I'm waving my arms 
around and trying desperately to spit and purge the food from my mouth.

Which, thankfully, I managed after 10 or 20 or 30 seconds.  (Not that I 
was keeping count at the time.)

And as this is happening, my 4-year-old daughter looks at me and says "Is 
it you, Daddy?" and she gets up from the table and walks over to the 
kitchen and repeats the question a few times ... and three thoughts pass 
through my brain simultaneously:  One, dear God let this be over soon. 
Two, if something happened to me, what would my kids do, and when would 
anybody find out?  (My wife's at work for the next several hours, but we 
do have a behavioural interventionist stopping by in an hour or so to work 
with our autistic son.  It's not like she has a key, though.)  And three, 
I really wish my daughter would shut up so I could focus on this!!

Once the worst of it was over, though, I did take the opportunity to 
explain to my daughter the difference between food pipes and air pipes in 
our bodies, and how we shouldn't eat or drink too quickly, and how *this* 
is why I get concerned about the way she always guzzles her juice.

And now I've got sore stomach muscles and sore arms -- arms! -- but at 
least I'm in the clear.  In the meantime, I've put on a video, and 
probably quicker or sooner than I would have otherwise, just because I 
want the kids to be reasonably calm and distracted right now.  (Though as 
I speak, the two-year-old is bouncing happily on the couch as though it 
were a trampoline, and occasionally making eye contact with me...)

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