Staring Down Death

I'm risk averse. On the infrequent occasions when I engage in a dangerous activity, I take reasonable safety precautions. Before hammering a nail into the wall, I don the steel toed boots Verizon issued me so I could safely climb telephone poles during the anticipated 2003 strike. I take the precaution because the slightest distraction could cause me to drop the hammer on my big toe, ending aspirations for a ballet career in my next life. (Verizon's reason for giving me the boots has never been clear. The main danger of working on a telephone pole would appear to be falling off it. Should that have happened, a parachute would have saved my life. Sixteen pound boots would have propelled downward to my death. But perhaps they had their reasons.) While my Weight Watcher's triple cheese lasagna is heating in the microwave, I busy myself in the bedroom closet, just in case the Enquirer articles about brain damage caused by proximity to microwaves prove true.
Yet, every morning and evening, defenseless, I flirt with death. I enter the kitchen and extract the 9 inch calcium pill from its Duane Reade bottle. It is, I've been advised. vital to avoiding shrinkage. Not that kind of shrinkage. The kind that would reduce me from my current 4'11 to Thumbelina. I place the calcium pill on my tongue and take a swig of orange juice. The pill gets caught at the back of my throat and I start to gag. Terrified, my thoughts race, "Am I dying?" "Should I perform the Heimlich maneuver on myself?" "Wait, I don't know how to perform the Heimlich." "Why did I pay more attention to my turkey burger than I did to the Heimlich poster?" After what seems like an eternity, I cough the pill into the sink.
Should I try again? I do a quick risk-benefit analysis. If I don't take it, I may fit into a toddler 4. Although that's a smaller size than I currently wear, something I would usually view as a positive, here, it is definitely a negative. If I do take it, I may choke to death in in my own kitchen. No one will find me for days and the cat, having no one to feed him, will gnaw at my corpse.
I feed the cat. I mull. I watch a Frazier rerun. I check my living will. I tell myself not to be a wuss. People perform life-threatening tasks every day. Look at firefighters. The bombsquad. The lox slicer at Fairway. If they can stare death in the face, so can I. I re-place the pill on my tongue. I take a swig of the orange juice. The pill gets trapped again in the rear of my throat. After several desperate "chs," it pops out.
Was this what you thought was coming? No, you thought I would give you a pretty ending. I'd swallow the pill, my bones would not deteriorate and you'd continue to be able to see me with the naked eye. Instead, I gave you reality. When they make multi-colored chewable Flintstone 600 mg calcium pills with D, I'll try again.