I was having a conversation with my old University roommate the other day and he brought up the story of the time I text messaged him repeatedly in a non sensical panic. I had long since buried the memory. It was the day I got forked.

He was in the lab with a couple of friends doing some group work on an assignment. I was at the condo getting ready to eat dinner. I had made a stir fry using brown rice, some veggies, and chicken. It was piping hot but I was so hungry I just didn’t give a damn. I sat down with fork in hand, took a huge forkful of the stir fry, and proceeded to bury the fork into my mouth. I felt the heat of the food instantly burn the roof of my mouth. As I got ready to spit the food back out, I felt a sharp pain on the lower part of my mouth, inside the bottom row of my teeth on both sides. It was the fork. And it was stuck. I yanked a couple of times but the fork wouldn’t budge. It was literally wedged between the bottom row of my teeth. The heat of the food had caused the metal fork to expand at the exact moment I put it into my mouth. The heat, timing and angle had to be perfect for the fork to enter my mouth, expand, and decide to make itself a permanent fixture in my mouth. Mind you, the food was still burning the inside of my mouth. Too hot to swallow, I rushed to the bathroom, turned my head to one side, and proceeded to use my fingers to claw the food out. As I looked at myself in the mirror I couldn’t help but laugh. “What the hell are the odds of getting a fork stuck in my mouth?”, I thought. I carefully examined my situation in the mirror, wondering what my options were. I yanked and yanked a couple more times. Nothing. My mouth was bleeding. It wasn’t that funny anymore. I started to get a little nervous. I figured since the fork expanded that some cold water would cause it to contract. But it was too little, too late. That fucking fork wasn’t going anywhere. I started to think that I was in some serious trouble. I sat down on my computer and started Googling stupid shit like “How to remove a fork from your mouth?”. Unsurprisingly, nothing useful came up. I started to panic, and that’s when I started to frantically text message my roommate. Can you imagine getting text messages like “HELP ME. A FORK IS STUCK IN MY MOUTH!” and “YES YOU MORON I’VE TRIED TO PULL THE FORK OUT! TAKE ME TO THE HOSPITAL!!” while you are in a lab with group members. What would you do? Well in the case of my roommate he thought I was retarded, showed his group members so they all thought I was an idiot, and laughed it off. I kept sending him these messages until finally one of his group members called me to see if I was just messing around. I didn’t answer and wrote back “HOW CAN I PICKUP WITH A FORK IN MY MOUTH. GOD YOU GUYS ARE SO STUPID”. My roommate, after about 10 exchanges, finally started to sense the urgency of the messages, and agreed to come home. By that time I was so freaked out, I just figured I’d yank as hard as I could and lose a couple of teeth in the process. At least that blasted fork would be out of my mouth. And so that’s what I did. I yanked so hard that when the fork finally came out of my mouth I shot backwards and landed right on my ass. My mouth was a bloody mess but thankfully I didn’t lose any teeth. I rose in victory, did a little dance, and texted my roommate telling him he didn’t have to come home now. To this day he still thinks I’m an idiot.