I was trying to herd the boys out the door of Melissa’s house just as she finished cooking dinner for her family — pancakes and bacon. Melissa’s youngest was wailing, having awoken grumpily from his nap, and I was snapping at the boys about shoes and wet clothes and things, and we were all pretty hungry.
Oscar, unbeknownst to me, took a large piece of not-terribly-crisp bacon off the serving plate and stuffed it whole into his mouth. I was trying to pull a dry T-shirt over Milo’s head when I heard a strange noise behind me and turned to find Oscar choking on the bacon. He was bent over, making little gurgling sounds, turning red — and simultaneously trying to stuff the trailing end into his mouth.
"Spit it out," I said sharply, and he only cupped his hand more tightly over his mouth. "Spit it out!" I said again, then shouted, "SPIT IT OUT!" For some reason, this (the fact that Oscar wouldn’t spit it out even when I yelled at him) pissed me off more than worried me, which was probably good because when I came around behind him I performed a Heimlich maneuver that just about had the character of child abuse. It lifted him off the floor. He took a whistling breath and I screamed "SPIT IT OUT!" again because I could just see him using that breath, or the next one, to inhale the big blob of bacon right back into his throat. (I started to do it again but Melissa’s husband Chris pointed out that he had taken a breath and I should stop now.) Finally he ejected a chewed, rubbery blob onto the rug. Chris picked it up and threw it in the trash. I sat down on a nearby chair.
Oscar started to wail and threw his arms around my neck and sobbed. I held him and said I was sorry that I had yelled at him.
Oscar wailed: "Chris threw my bacon in the garbage!"
And then he wailed: "Stop laughing at me!"
And then he wailed: "I want some more bacon!"
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