COTTAGE CHEESE

COTTAGE CHEESE
A true story
991 words

Every once in a while, something happens to you that changes the way you think, feel and eat for the rest of your life.
My life-changing event took place when I worked for a private ambulance company. My partner and I were called to a nursing home to pick up a cute little old lady and take her to the hospital for some tests.

When we arrived, our little old lady was just finishing her lunch. I walked up to the side of her bed just as she was pushing a huge spoonful of cottage cheese into her mouth.

I waved and said loudly, “Hello.”
She looked over at the empty space next to me, so I made a big giant wave, like I was in a parade and she saw me. I think.

“Are you ready to go to the hospital?”
She didn’t seem to notice and looked back down at her cottage cheese.

A tiny little nurse came in the room and announced, “she doesn’t hear too good.”
She stood on her tiptoes next to our patient and in a voice that would make an Army drill sergeant proud yelled, “THESE BOYS ARE TAKING YOU TO THE HOSPITAL.”

The sweet little old lady didn’t look up but just nodded. She was intent on getting that last spoonful of cottage cheese in her mouth.

Nurse Bullhorn opened her mouth to say something and I covered my ears. But in her normal voice said, “She’s all yours” and left the room.

The next twenty minutes was spent yelling at the top of our lungs and jumping around like clowns trying to coax this little old lady to slide onto our gurney so we could leave.
She, on the other hand was more interested in finding the large curds of cottage cheese she had spilled on her shirt and getting each one in her mouth.

On the way to the hospital I couldn’t help but notice that her mouth was in perpetual motion. Something was stuck in a tooth or behind her dentures.

When we arrived at the hospital we pulled the gurney out of the back of the ambulance and set it on the ground.

I bent over and asked in a normal voice, “How are you doing?” 

Then I remembered whom we were dealing with and I put my face directly in front of her face. Taking a deep breath and opening my mouth up wide I began to yell, “HOW …”

That’s as far as I got.

At times like this you have to marvel at what an amazing organ the brain is. Sensing imminent danger, my brain went into emergency mode. Time and space was now an ultra slow motion movie.

In that split second period of time, I saw her mouth suddenly stop moving. Whatever she had been hunting for with her tongue, she had found it.
I saw the tip of her tongue protrude just a little bit between her dry, cracked lips. Her cheeks puffed out from the increase of air pressure in her mouth.

She looked up at the empty space next to my head and then…and then a huge curd of cottage cheese exploded from her mouth.

In slow motion the curd came at me, like a huge asteroid tumbling through space, throwing off little balls of spit in all directions. Slowly, tumbling, towards my open mouth.

I could hear my brain trying to warn me. In a deep, slurred drug induced dream –like voice, it said, “Miiiike cloooose yourrrrrr mouuuuth! Ohhhh NOOOOO! Close youurrrr mouuuth!”

Time raced back to normal as the cottage cheese asteroid entered my mouth’s atmosphere, became a cottage cheese meteor and slammed directly into the back of my throat.

I immediately made the international sign for choking. Clutching my hands around my neck, I stumbled backwards and dropped to my knees, gagging and coughing, trying to dislodge the curd from the back of my throat.

There are seven different types of shock. I was in five of them. This was the grossest thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.

My partner instinctively made the international sign for choking around his neck and he too began gagging. This is known as ‘sympathetic choking.’

I tried giving myself the Heimlich maneuver by throwing myself against the side of the gurney. This dislodged the curd from the back of my throat and moved it into my mouth.

This, was the second grossest thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life. I wasted no time in spitting every molecule of moisture out of my mouth, but not before I reminded myself that this curd of cottage cheese had just been in that ladies 90-year-old mouth.

I began to dry heave.

My partner saw this, rolled around the side of the ambulance and also started dry heaving. That would be ‘sympathetic heaving.’

A crowd was now forming.  A nurse came over to me and asked, “Are you ok?”

In between heaves I sputtered, “Everything’s fine, shows over, move along.”

Getting to my feet, I tried to pretend nothing had happened. It was difficult to pull it off since I was retching every few seconds. I wanted to rinse my mouth out with gasoline.

I looked at Grandma Spitty-Poo. She was oblivious to the near death experience she had just caused. She just laid there on the gurney searching the front of her shirt for more of her lunch.

I haven’t eaten cottage cheese in over five years now. It took me two years and a lot of therapy before I would even walk down the dairy isle at the supermarket.

I used to like cottage cheese. I used to like a lot of things; milk, spitting watermelon seeds, talking to people without flinching and keeping my hand over my mouth, white chocolate covered raisins, little old ladies.


Copyright 1999 Michael Cyra