I Don't Know Why

On Thursday I was teaching a lesson to my seventh graders, and a fly was buzzing around. I was swatting vaguely but not paying too much attention to it. Suddenly, it wasn't there any more, because it had flown down my throat. I sputtered a little bit, coughed a few times, and then went on teaching.

Mostly I felt proud of myself, though slightly grossed out by thoughts of where that fly might have been. I swallowed a fly and kept right on with my lesson! How professional of me! The kids didn't even know it had happened!

Of course my colleagues and my Facebook friends made every possible joke, from calling me an old lady (thanks, folks) to suggesting that perhaps I would die, to prescribing all kinds of chasers for the fly ("You should swallow a spider next," wrote my brother. "It's the right thing to do."), though someone said I really shouldn't go as far as a horse.

I don't know why I swallowed a fly. I seem to be surviving the experience, though.