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Life saving maneuvers

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Last Tuesday was not only Statehood Day in Oklahoma but it was also the 8th birthday of our granddaughter, Lane.

To celebrate the occasion we went out to dinner.

At a table next to us was a young family.

The mom and dad were in their 30s and the oldest of the three kids was a boy about 10 or 11.

I glanced at them as we were sitting down but didn’t give it much thought.

That is until there was a great commotion coming from the table.

The adolescent boy had become choked on his food.

The dad jumped up and began pounding on the boy’s back trying to dislodge the food.

The mother had her hands over her mouth obviously in horror.

When pounding on his back didn’t do the trick, the father started doing the Heimlich maneuver on the lad and I became quite sick to my stomach.

The Heimlich worked and the youth went back to eating his meal.

The mother and father, so relieved, also went back to their meal but the whole ordeal reminded me of when I was about that same age at that boy.

Ironically, it was also a Tuesday night.

My mother was at some sort of meeting so my sister, my father and I were up late (8:30) watching “The Red Skelton Show”.

I was laying on the couch, and being a stupid kid was, dropping marbles in my mouth and spitting them out.

As you can now imagine the marbles got lodged in my throat.

Some of them came out of my mouth but I was in obvious peril.

My father grabbed me up by my ankles and started pounding my head on the floor trying to dislodge the marbles.

I swallowed a couple of them and the remainder fell harmlessly to the floor.

I’m not quite sure how my dad didn’t have a heart attack but he saved my life while years came off of his.

We went back to watching Red but marbles have never entered my mouth again.

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