People are such wonderful machines.
Your throat splits into the shape of a fork in the road. When the machine is running smoothly, food and drink take one fork to your stomach. Air takes the other fork into and out of your lungs. When there's a glitch in the machine, an eensy-weensy thing like a peanut could get stuck in your trachea, and that wonderful machine could just shut down. Fancy name for your windpipe, which is the fork in your throat that goes down into your lungs.