Commuter Amusing

Do you ever completely forget how to accomplish simple physical tasks? Even those you’ve been doing since you could breath - needed purely to live?
I was walking along in the blistering heat (as much as heat can blister in England) and reached into my bag for some water. Now don’t judge me too harshly as being completely unfit; the road was the longest and contained the most hills I have ever encountered in my whole life. So, as I said, I reached for the bottle of water tactically living at the bottom of my bag and took a very large amount of its contents into my mouth. And then, I forgot how to swallow.
Now, I kid you not, the fear that shot through me when I thought I was going to drown in my own mouth rivalled  that caused by the bizarre falling sensation you sometimes get when lying in bed. I froze on the pavement. Stood there, eyes wide in fear and cheeks full of water, leaving me looking not unlike Theodore from Alvin and the Chipmunks. For some reason, it didn’t strike me that I could just let it out and as I panicked, rapidly running out of air, being stared at by every driver and passenger in the unmoving traffic jam on the road beside me. I decided that I’d take the “pill approach”. I threw my head back and tried to let gravity do the work, making the water flow down my oesophagus. But, with as much in my mouth as I had, this looked less like a cure for a headache and more like a humpback whale with a split lip. Gravity did the trick though and even if I didn’t end up quenching my thirst completely, I did cool down a little from being drenched on the outside by the water meant for my inside. Needless to say, when I had finally calmed myself, I moved quickly along – to the stares of the still stubbornly unmoving traffic jam – and waited until I got home to attempt any more hydrating.
It was awkward,  but at least it gave the commuters stuck in rush hour traffic something to laugh about. God knows they need it.