Near Death Experience

I almost died last night.

There is an urban legend that Mama Cass, the larger than life face of the Mamas and the Papas and arguably the voice that propelled them from relative obscurity to being one of the most iconic vocal bands of the 60's (without her would they ever have achieved their blend of four harmonies that somehow tricked your ear into hearing a fifth-now here is a place where the overused word synergy is a actually appropriate) died, poetically, choking on a ham sandwich. That she died both at the hands of and in the arms of her truest love. The boring truth is that she died, quite un-glamorously, of an apparent heart attack in her home (join the club).

I almost died in a manner after her urban legend last night.

After I blogged about LOST (a sort of pot calling the kettle black-ishly lazy effort if I do say so myself) I decided to stay up to watch Saturday Night Live with my husband. He is a huge fan and tries to watch as often as possible. I, as the mother of four, just can't afford to miss out on the sleep and usually shuffle off to Buffalo after our Saturday sampling from Netflix. I guess I was in rare form last night, movie watching, blogging etc...so I figured what the heck, break out the crackers, cheeses and salami and watch Tina Fey thank her fake entourage, including Chaka Khan as interpreted by the black guy on SNL who plays every black woman exactly the same-without attempting to look or act anything like her.

About ten buttery crackers topped with slices of cheddar (not just any old cheddar but some fancy award winning stuff) and dry, Italian Salami, I felt something scrape the back of my throat. I tried clearing it, but it seemed to just lodge itself behind my tonsil. A small flap of thin sliced salami had created a synthetic epiglottis, which was evidently permanently sealing off my trachea. I tried to cough it loose and felt like it was having the desired effect, but every time I tried to breathe in I simply sucked the flap back into place and could get no air. As I panicked in the realization that there was nothing I could do to prevent my death by asphyxiation that night, part of my mind was using humor in an attempt to deflect from the seriousness of the situation. It became clear that a wormhole had been created in the fabric of the universe connecting the fictional LOST character Desmond Hume (circa the Swan hatch era) and myself via the solo effort written and performed by Cass Elliot after the Mamas and the Papas had split due to creative and personal differences - "Make Your Own Kind of Music." As I heard the lyrics "Nobody can tell ya there's only one song worth singin'. They may try and sell ya,'cause it hangs them up to see someone like you" in my head, a warmth washed over me along with something that seemed like inner peace, at the time, but in retrospect was probably just some kind of hypoxic euphoria. I hoped that one day, long after I was gone, when they made the movie of the story of my life that this song would play as the soundtrack to my death. That was soon replaced, as if in concert with the climax of the refrain...

But you've gotta make your own kind of music
sing your own special song,
make your own kind of music even if nobody
else sings along.

...by a sudden violent gag. I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Luckily I had been drinking a lot of lime seltzer to wash down those crackers so it all came back up rather easily. And somewhere in the stream of liquid regurge the flap came loose and I lived to see a few more minutes of Liz Lemon's fictional alter ego Tina Fey make fun of Sarah Palin and Tiger Woods' lady loves.

Just thought I would share.