by: Hilary

When I was nine years old, I was sitting on my older brother's water bed watching "The X-Files." My big bro had a lot of spare pennies laying around and I knew better than to put them in my mouth and play with them, but I was mad bored so I did it anyway. So, I had this penny in my mouth and I must have wiggled a little or something because the water bed started moving. Of course, the movement made me choke on the penny. I ran out of my brother's room into the living room coughing with my hands around my throat. My mom instantly screamed, "Oh my God!" and came running towards me. Before she could get to me, I gave one mighty cough and I somehow mananged to swallow the penny! So, once I could speak, I let my mom know that I had choked on a penny and that now my chest hurt really, really bad. So, she called up my older brother (he had the car at the time) and had him pick us up so I could be taken to the hospital. It turned out that the penny had lodged itself in my esopha gus. So, after waiting a night to see if the penny would move at all (it didn't), I had to get surgery to take the penny out. They put me to sleep, stuck a tube down my throat, and used these long tweezers with a camera on the end to pull it out. Ever since I got out of surgery, my family and friends have enjoyed calling me "The Human Piggy Bank" and to this day I cannot be around any pennies without someone asking, "Are you hungry or something, Hilary?" It was quite an embarrassing ordeal, but I still have the penny in a jar and pictures taken of my esophagus as they were pulling it out! Interesting souveniors...

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