Ill-Advised Moment

At about the age of seven, my younger sister, Maddie, and I were searching through the kitchen for food. We sighed in defeat as we sat down on the two chairs at the island. Maddie was a year younger than me, but she always said, “It’s not a year. It’s 15 months minus one day, duh”. Caleb, my older brother, who is two years older than me, strolled into the kitchen. “What are you two doing?” he asked. “Dying. We are dying,” I said sarcastically, but hey, in my family, sarcasm came to us early, for some of us. “What are you talking about, Tori?” Maddie said to me, “We aren’t dying, we just can’t find any food,” she said with a smile. “If you’re hungry, I have a game we can play,” he said suspiciously. I eyed him, but my sister was up for the challenge, “Sure. I bet I’ll win!” I rolled my eyes. “What is this ‘game’ that you created?” I asked. “Ok. This is how it’s going to go,” he started, “I’m going to give each of you an atomic fireball,” he continued as he reached into our dad’s drawer, and you do not want to go in there. My eyes widen as he pulled two of them out, “and we are going to see who can keep this in their mouth the longest,” he finished. “Um…ok so all we have to do is keep this in our mouths the longest and that person wins?” I asked and he nodded. I unwrapped the candy slowed and placed it in my hand. The candy smelled like cinnamon so I held it up to my mouth as my brother started, “On your marks, get set. GO!” he shouted and I tossed the candy into my mouth. It started burning my tongue, but not hot-burning, it was a this-is-spicy-burning. I never knew that a candy that tastes like cinnamon would taste so bad.. I glanced over at Maddie and I could tell that she didn’t like the taste at all. Her face was scrunched up and didn’t open her eyes in concentration. “Here’s a hint for you: if you don’t like the taste push it back in your mouth, far on your tongue and you won’t taste it,” he said. I shrugged slightly at his hint and I thought about it. He did sound sure of himself, so I went to try it. The round candy slowly rolled back on my tongue. The only problem with the round candy rolling back in my mouth was that I didn’t know how far to tilt my head and I tilted my head too far and the candy rolled down in my throat. I started to choke. Panicking, I started flailing my arms in the air trying to get my two siblings attention. My brother was currently waving his hands in front of Maddie’s face trying to get her to open his eyes. He tilted his head back as he laughed and turned towards me who was turning a slight red from the candy lodged in my throat. He gasped, then started laughing at me. I wanted to shout at him and tell him it wasn’t funny but no sound was coming out. I could barely make a wheezing sound. Maddie slightly open her left eye and turned to see what was going on. She was confused at first but then shrugged it off to start spitting out the candy she had. She began to run around the island screaming at what was happening. My mom finally heard the commotion and immerged from where she was in the office. She turned the corner and got a glimpse of what had happened and curiously wandered over to where we were. She first noticed what Maddie was doing because she was the loudest and frankly the most annoying out of the three of us. She continued to move forward and noticed Caleb laughing and relaxed a little. Lastly, she turned to me and only saw the back of me. I turned around and she saw my red face and my hands on my throat. Freaking out she ran over to me. She started asking ‘what had happened?’, and ‘how did this happen?’ and because I was choking I couldn’t answer so she rounded on Caleb, who was on the ground, on the verge of tears from laughing too much. He had explained the story, but didn’t go without a laughing fit between almost every pause. My mom looked calm but her eyes shone with fury. She rotated towards me and her eyes lost the fury and gained surprise. She had forgotten that I was the one who talked the most and now wasn’t talking at all. She didn’t realize that my face was as red as a tomato. She did know that the candy wasn’t really stuck but just needed to be drained out with water and she handed me a glass of water. I chugged the glass like my life depended on it and took a deep breath when I was done. I turned to my family and started shouting at them that my throat was hurting and there was a candy, dad’s candy at that, had been swallowed whole because of Caleb. My Dad had chosen that moment to walk into the house and we had to explain it to him. But that’s another story.