I took the biggest taquito on the tray, dipped it as far into the bowl of sour cream as it would go, and inhaled that thing like I was a congressman who had just burned down an orphanage to make room for an oil rig and was sucking eagerly on the end of a cigar. But here was the problem. I quite literally inhaled it. Like, for some reason, I actually sucked on the sour-creamed end of the taquito, presumably to extract as much flavor as I could and prolong this savory bliss. But the dried, frozen meat inside the rolled shell somehow came loose and shot to the back of my throat, and when I coughed, the meat came back up just enough for half of it to catch in the metal expander and lodge there, the other half dangling down the back of my throat.

So there I was, in the center of my brother’s surprise sixteenth birthday party, involuntarily deep-throating the dried beefy center of a taquito, and freaking the fuck out. If you’ve ever seen footage of a pelican swallowing a fish that somehow swims back up its gullet, that’s exactly what was happening to me, except it wasn’t a fish, it was a hard rod of spicy meat, and it wasn’t swimming out of me so much as it was being held immovably halfway between a swallow and a regurgitation.

I panicked. I looked around and nobody seemed to notice I was being slowly choked to death by the meat of a taquito colluding with the metal brace on the roof of my mouth. I started coughing, and then waving, and then fearfully grabbing my neck, and if I hadn’t been so afraid I was experiencing the end, I would’ve enjoyed the melodrama of it all, but something about dying via taquito didn’t feel quite dramatic enough to accept—I’d prefer to die in a blaze set by Beyoncé’s own hands—so I fought. And by fought, I mean I ran in panic to my mother, who opened my mouth like she did when the dog snatches a dropped piece of chocolate, reached into my esophagus, and ripped the meat free.

I took a deep breath of oxygen and probably fainted, for maximum dramatic effect. And even though I spent the rest of the party as the focus of everyone’s empathy, I could not forgive the hunk of metal in my mouth for turning food against me.

So here is my message, which I give to you as the survivor of this unspeakable trauma: Do not trust dentists. Do not trust orthodontists. Do not trust anybody who dares insert into your mouth a tiny tray of butthole putty, or a steel torture device, or a string of jagged metal braces. They are designed to turn you against the only thing you will ever love. And if you let them, they will succeed.