So the other day I decided to go to fill up my car at the West Portal Chevron. I generally like going there because there aren't that many lines there and I can clean my windows in peace. It's kind of a ritual for me - cleaning my car windows on a nice sunny day - is sort of therapeutic.
I'm doing my business and I start coughing. I wasn't too worried about the cough mind you because it was really pollen-y outside and I just attributed it to allergies. I start rummaging through my car and found a handy dandy cough drop. I'm feeling rather smug and boy scout like (be prepared!) and pop the cough drop in my mouth.
I finish cleaning my windows - both inside and out and am feeling very proud of myself. My car is sparkling (at least as sparkling a beat up '88 volkswagon can get) and I drive out of the gas station lot. I'm sucking on my cough drop and driving down the road when a pedestrian suddenly pops out and crosses the street. I mean I have nothing against pedestrians at all. I figure I'm a pedestrian about 99% of the time so I'm ok with the whole having to cross streets thing. So I stop rather ubruptly. Right as I stop, I cough, and right as I cough, the guy behind me honks. Now due to the vagaries of evolution the breathing tube in folks happens to be also connected to the eating tube. And just at that instant because of this random conjunction of events I'm startled and I snarf my cough drop. The cough drop doesn't innocently drop into my stomach - which in a perfect world it would, but rather decides to get lodged where the confluence of pipes in my body lead to my lungs.
At this point I can no longer breathe. It takes a second for me to register exactly what happened. During that eternal second the guy behind me, I won't point at stereotypes (but he happened to be driving a shiny black jetta and had a cute blond girlfriend sitting next to him and I guess lives in the Northeast part of the city), continues to honk incessently. I suddenly get stressed. I don't get stressed because I can't breathe, but because I can't do anything about the honking guy behind me. I know it's irrational, but I guess my mind was flailing around quite a bit. At this point I'm holding my neck and pushing my body on top of the steering wheel to simulate what I saw on one of those CPR movies which I guess was a self-heimlich. Giving oneself a self-heimlich is really hard to do - especially inside a car. I mean in the movies all you have to do is find a nice counter or chair and do nice little push and poof! problem solved! Well there was no chair and no counter. Just Bobo the happy clown honking away behind me. I figure I must be a nice shade of purple by now and decide it might be better to get out of my car to rectify this whole breathing problem.
I got out of my car and start to frantically look for a solution. By now Bobo has figured something is up and has stopped honking. Once the honking stopped my flailing mind had one less thing to deal with. My little eyes darted over to a little corner restaurant and in the recesses of my mind it said - "hey there's a place with lots of counters and chairs", but a little message bubble popped up in my head saying "man that would be bad for business if some random guy ran into the restaurant and started humping all the chairs and counters." I then look over at the car hood of my Volkswagon fox and thought "hey that's a nice flat service with an edge on it! it almost can be a counter!". With that thought I start slamming my body against the hood as best I can. So now my little mind is thinking, "man I must look like an idiot humping my car in traffic. hey wait a second don't dogs like to do this to people? hey they must be choking too! and all this time i thought my leg had special dog pheremones - silly me!". At that moment I thrust my body just right and urp a cough drop on my shiny clean windshield. I kind of slump over on my car hood spent gasping for air. Bobo the clown drives his car around me to take a look and all I could squeak out was "Cough drop!". He gives me this look that says "Freak!" and drives off.
So now my once shiny window has cough drop urp on it, but I'm not in the mood to go the West Portal Chevron too soon.