I was 14 or 15 the night of that slumber party, so it was during the summer of 1964 or ‘65. I think the venue was Jill’s house (see Bad Idea, posted on April 14), which was unusual. It was also a different party because the guests were not all in the same school grade.

Shelba, for example, was the older sister of a classmate who lived on my street. I wasn’t close to her or even her sister but I knew the family (I recall that they raised rabbits for a time, and one batch of babies was born with blot clots in their toes, and when the dad tried to correct the situation himself – operating on those rabbit baby toes without anesthesia of course – the result was infection and then a litter of dead baby rabbits).

Anyway, there at Jill’s that night was a bunch of us. We were lounging around in the den/family room, in our nightclothes but nowhere near ready for sleep. Among the snacks available to us was fresh summer fruit.

I don’t know how the plum-eating competition started, but some of the older girls tried ingesting them whole. Or said they were going to. Shelba was not an outgoing person, but she surprised us all by announcing she could do it and ramming an entire plum into her mouth. She got it past her teeth but then couldn’t bring them to bear on it. And when she tried to remove it from her mouth, her teeth prevented that extraction. She began to panic. She started to wheeze. Then gag.

We ran for Jill’s parents and they couldn’t get at the plum either. Shelba was freaking out and so were some of us. Next thing we knew, the fire department was in the room. Big men in dark outfits, authoritative but calm

They held Shelba firmly and spoke assurance to her. Then they cut the plum while it was in her mouth and removed it in pieces. They retreated to their trucks and left us to grow calm.

Long afterwards I heard of a mean prank: drunk guys betting a patsy to put a pool ball into his mouth (much harder to surgically remove).

But I’d already learned the lesson. There’s an expression that goes, “Don’t bite off more than you can chew.” This variation is “Don’t try to eat what you can’t chew.”