Ok so this is not a booze recipe I will be tweeting to Robert McCammon. He and I have been trading poison concoctions. I like a vodka tonic with lime, but I like it really cold. Almost like a slushy drink. So the other night I made one and tossed it in the freezer. It was in a heavy bottom tumbler that had been hand blown and had a small air bubble in the bottom. It accidentally ended up in the dishwasher so this little air pocket got filled with water, and was held by magic or physics, which are pretty much the same thing in my book. Anyway, and putting a point to my statement, the tonic in my glass froze and so did the water in the air pocket. Water expands when it turns to a solid. Pressure escapes along the path of least resistance. Ok enough physics. Suffice to say that my slushy drink had a little more than ice in it. The bottom of the glass failed and broke upward from the very center infusing my nightcap with sharp little shards of expensive glass.
Pop quiz everybody. It is two in the morning you’ve just ingested a quantity of broken glass the size of a quarter, well closer to a Looney. But if I say Looney, readers outside Canada might get lost. What do you do? I called poison control. When you call poison control the person answers the phone with; “Have you been poisoned?” Several glib remarks sprang immediately to mind. Recently? As a sport? This isn’t big girls in boots? But I held my tongue and with a pregnant pause said, “Well I am not entirely certain at this point.” I then laid out my folly. She didn’t laugh.
Seems this kind of thing happens more than you’d think. Either that or she was telling me lies to make me feel better. In any case she told me not to induce vomiting. That was a good thing as I didn’t have any of the puke syrup and due to some design flaw I don’t seem to have a gag reflex. I say FLAW, as I will never need this particular feature. She mentioned that the human body is quite good at passing things like this as we did evolve from foraging for food. But!
Here it comes, I thought, this will be the last twenty seconds of truth. Like the drug commercials that tell you your happy pills may make you take a frozen chicken to your spouse and beat them to death. Or worse anal seepage!
She went on to say if you start to feel weak or have pain go to the emergency ward. Now while she had been talking and reassuring me everything would be fine I had all the screens going on the Internet looking for just how my death would pan out. There really isn’t a great deal out there on this. Which makes me feel like she had been blowing smoke earlier in the conversation. So I offered a few of the possible fixes. One guy had given his dog cotton balls, at the vet’s direction, and sure enough the balls had picked up the little shards and came out; dog unscathed. Vets are doctors, the physics (I lied) sounded good!
She laughed at me. Then, attempting her best motherly calm down little boy voice, told me to search eating glass videos on google. I did and if those retards didn’t die I knew I was going to be fine. So I poured myself six fingers of vodka and thought might as well swab the cuts with alcohol!
I know this is different than my usual blog but I had to type it over a needy and exceedingly vicious cat, and figured you might enjoy the read. See stupid things happen even if you do have a “The” before your name! KIDDING!! If you want to follow Robert look him up on Twitter under Robert MacCammon not the real spelling of his last name. Great writer and his latest book just went into second printing after only a month or something. Amazing!
