creative expletives

"It was like that class at school where the teacher talks about Realization, about how you could realize something big in a commonplace thing. The example he gave—and the liar said it really happened—was that once while drinking orange juice, he’d realized he would be dead someday. He wondered if we, his students, had had similar ‘realizations.’
Is he kidding? I thought.
Once I cashed a paycheck and I realized it wasn’t enough.
Once I had food poisoning, and realized I was trapped inside my body."

Amy Hempel, Reasons to Live