overpriced bottled water

I left work this afternoon to find that over an inch of snow had fallen throughout the day. The fact that my office contains no windows eliminates all weather related knowledge from seeping into my consciousness. I knew, before I had even turned the key in the ignition to begin the windshield defrosting process, that this would be a very long, slow ride home.

To make matters all the more unpleasant, I’ve been fighting a cold since last weekend, and as I inched along in traffic, my sniffles turned stuffy, and soon my nose was rendered useless. Luckily, I had thought to bring along some DayQuil pills that I had tossed in the console that morning. And as I sat amidst the sea of red glowing tail lights, I ripped open the packet and popped the pill into my mouth.

To the eye, the pill seemed very small. Once swallowed, however, this pill that looked so tiny suddenly grew to the size of a grape and quickly lodged itself in my throat. I swallowed a few more times, but the stubborn pill, which now felt more like a golf ball than a grape, refused to budge.

As I sat there, not being able to breathe out of my nose and now being unable to breathe too well out of my mouth, I realized that some type of beverage was desperately needed to coax the pill down. With nothing to drink in the car, and being stuck in the middle of the expressway with no 7-11 nearby, I rolled down my window, scraped off a few inches of snow from my roof, and quickly began sucking down the snowball that I had made.

Unfortunately, I found that several inches of snow on your car only equate to a few drops of water once melted inside your mouth. And a few drops were not nearly enough to get this tennis ball sized pill out of my throat. Unsure of what to do next, I happened to notice that the red headed lady in the car next to me was drinking some bottled water.

Normally, a red headed, middle aged woman drinking bottled water would not register high on my second glance list. But at this moment, with a bowling ball sized DayQuil wedged in my throat, that half empty bottle of water she was drinking was the best thing I had ever seen.

Still at a standstill on the highway, I opened my door and knocked on her window.

Her response was much the same as anyone’s would be when someone knocks on their car window in the middle of the road. She looked startled, then suspicious, but finally opened her passenger side window a fraction of an inch.

“This will probably sound like a very odd request,” I croaked, “but I have a DayQuil pill stuck in my throat and would really appreciate it if you’d give me that bottle of water you’re drinking for a dollar.”

She shrugged, rolled down her window a few more inches…enough to take my dollar and hand me the bottle…then quickly rolled it right back up.

I got back in my car and vigorously wiped off the mouth of the bottle, because even though I was suffocating, I refused to die with this lady’s germs floating around in my dead body.

Once I was certain that the last of her germs had been rubbed off, I took several gulps. The pill washed down, my near death experience was over, and…according to the promise on the medication package…my nose would be working again in less than 10 minutes.

Breathing easy, I started realizing how stupid I had been…because, I probably could have talked that lady down to fifty cents had I really tried.