over my head
I haven't posted much, lately, because I've been feeling crappy, and there's nothing worse than regular updates about someone's latest illness, as far as I'm concerned. I always think of the Internet as a gigantic ballroom filled with people in their grandest attire, a string quartet playing in a corner, and servers with silver trays passing canapes and petit fours to everyone invited. Would I suddenly burst into that ballroom, stifle the string quartet and loudly announce to everyone gathered, "Phlegm!" Um, no.
Despite feeling like crap, I managed to attended a required CPR class at Hanley Inc. last Saturday. It was at ten in the morning, but that was okay, because I've been going to bed at sundown, or whenever a hat drops. Hanley Inc.'s CEO invited some friends and neighboring corporations to also attend, so there were about ten people there. Before class started Hanley toddled through the crowd, smiling, waving, and blowing kisses while flashing an award winning smile, apparently thinking that CPR stands for Everybody's Here For Hanley. She doesn't know the alphabet yet, so it's understandable. The Big H and a couple other Top Founding Presidential Supreme Executive Boss Lady types were taken upstairs for naps, while the rest of us sat with a nurse and a bunch of dummies and learned how to save lives.
The last time I'd learned CPR was when I was around 14 years old in high school. It was part of Home Ec, for some reason, if I remember correctly. Maybe after they taught us how to bake blueberry muffins they figured we should know CPR, in case one of us choked on them. Anyway, I recalled nodding off to one of those dull instructional videos when I was a kid, so I was glad when the nurse we were learning from said there would be no movies or dog and pony shows. I was still tired and achy, so I knew the second a television was turned on I'd lapse into a coma and start drooling.
I managed to stay awake and retain everything I was taught. I was doing fine, until we were learning how to save a choking baby. In one hand, you cradle the baby's head with the torso balanced down your arm, and then you deliver five firm back blows to try to dislodge the object. Then you rotate the baby to the other hand and arm, breast side up, baste with butter, salt lightly, and administer chest compressions with your fingers. (Hmm...was that right? If in doubt, make sure you have a parrot.) Then you flip back and forth until the baby revives or help arrives. So we're practicing this with our babies--the fake ones, not the napping Executive Supreme Beings--when all of a sudden my baby's head flew off in mid-flip. It's plastic and hollow, so it made a lot of noise as it clattered across the concrete floor. Everybody laughed. The nurse said, "Or, yes, you can remove the baby's head."