Do NOT Swallow THIS!

Nobody Wins! Here's a nifty neon sign that many Americans would just love to put up in their house!

Yes---it would look very snappy in the kitchen!

Well, for $3700, the neon artist Tapp Francke will make it yours!

Swallowing as we all know, is a very important human trait, without which we would all die of starvation. Here's an artist that thinks we need reminding!

Yes, swallowing is right up there with breathing. It's very special...don't just take it from Bill Clinton---I too have a "swallow" story to tell...

And it's true what they say: you learn the most from your mistakes.

I have witnessed first hand, one item, that you must try never, ever let pass down your throat...for the simple reason that one doctor told me it takes years to digest, and here's the life lesson that gained me that valuable knowledge---

Years ago, my son, who was at the time about three years old, swallowed half a bottle of pink baby aspirin.

Dummy me. I left it next to his bedside by just being my forgetful self, but I thought that he knew enough NOT to eat the stuff.

As all parents know, it tastes like cherry.

I was wrong.

Well, in an emotional panic, I picked up my kid, pajama's and all, stuffed him into the front seat of the car, and off to the nearest emergency room we went, when I discovered the bottle half empty. Like most kids, he didn't admit to it, and that's usually a pretty good sign that you should start worrying, at least that's what I thought.

Immediately at the hospital, they started pumping the poor kid's stomach. I felt so stupid as I watched the tube going down his throat, due to my clumsy mistake my poor baby was going to go through some very uncomfortable pain..

But then...stuff started coming out---and it wasn't baby aspirin.

Lump after lump, after BIG HUGE lumps the size of small tomatoes were being projected out like bullets---of...not baby aspirin, but chewing GUM. Forget the baby aspirin...to me this was a precursor to baby cancer...

"What's is THAT!!!" I screamed, like any normal mother.

"Oh" said the doctor with a smile. "Looks like gum. It won't hurt him, it just doesn't digest. Takes about seventeen years."

Seventeen years? How did they come by that number?

"Why doesn't it digest?" I said.

"Well, it's mostly rubber." said the doctor.

To this day, I have no idea if that doctor was pulling my leg.

Having to watch my young boy heave such a magnitude of rubber the size of small baseballs, was enough to ruin my entire week.

In the end, after it was all "out," he ending up being just fine. The doctor said, he saw no baby aspirin. How could he? It was probably swallowed up by the gum.

My brave boy (who had told the truth, he did not swallow the pills) was not even phased by the ordeal...but at the end of the session I counted seventeen (maybe that's where the doctor came up with that number) big wades of chewing gum in that bedpan.

I learned many lessons that day. Don't believe your kid when he says he will never eat something if he's too young to comprehend why not, and don't swallow gum.

Oh, and try not to go completely bonkers and forget how many pills are in a bottle when you work long hours at night.

To this day, I'm very careful what I swallow. (stop it.) AND I NEVER throw a wade of gum on the ground because it might end up in some poor birds stomach.

Think about that the next time you go to throw your gum on the ground. If it doesn't come out of a human, can you imagine what it does to a bird?

In the end, I thought the event was a good thing, because if my son had not gotten his stomach pumped, he would have never known that gum is bad to swallow...and by now, who knows how many pieces he could still have there and what lifelong damage it could have done?

I mean, I had NO idea he swallowed gum...I had told him not to...really.

And Francke's sign? He suggests people put it in their bedroom, but this nobody thinks a light that bright would keep anyone up all night, you'd never get any sleep.

You might reach for the wrong sleeping pills... you might accidently swallow a wade of gum off your nightstand...

I'm just saying.....