The Day The Kid Stopped Breathing In My Primary Class

I enjoy writing and I enjoy my sister in law. She moved away and its one of those things where you don't realize what you had in a friendship until its gone.

But it is fun to have this blog together even though its only us who reads it for now. One day surely we will be famous public speakers together who tag team marvelously on stage and make billions of dollars from our witty repartee.

Since we can write about anything we want in this blog together my first post on this blog will be about what happened today in my primary class. If Jami and I would have had Sunday dinner together tonight I would have told her and her family this story.

It's a big exciting story so hold on to your butts.

Today at church the primary kids had all just gotten a basic disc shaped piece of hard candy from the music leader as they left sharing time to go to class. Of course we thought nothing of it until one of the little boys sitting next to me (I was on discipline duty this week sitting in the half circle with the kids trying to keep them quiet and respectful for my team teacher to teach) started to choke on it.

I wasn't sure at first if he was choking, but when his eyes started to bug out and he began to look more panicked and more scared I was definitely (well 70%) sure he was choking. I pulled the trashcan over to us and was in mental super slow mode as I'm watching the poor boy struggle and not know what to do. Of course the Heimlich maneuver scenes from movies and television are all playing in my head in pieces as I pat the boy on the back and encourage him to "get it out" (seems like dumb advice now, because of course that is what he was trying to do already but that's what I said).

Even though it was just seconds passing that he was choking on my watch it seemed like hours and it seemed like my best recourse would be to run screaming for "HEEEELLLLLP" through the halls of the church. I turned to my team teacher and said, "JoAn I think he's choking, do you think he's choking??!?" She thank heavens knew better how to get it out and did some fancy moves and SPITUU-EE he got the lodged candy into the garbage can.

Since JoAn had just finished saving our students life I figured it was only fair if I helped him cleanup his face by donating some of my baby wipes to the cause. A trip to the bathroom later and the kid was good as new!

A good learning experience for me. Telling the story to several CPR certified members of my family I now know how to more helpfully deal with the same situation should it ever occur again.

I'm grateful for a cool headed team teacher. I'm grateful that I didn't end up running through the halls of church screaming HEEEELLLP!!!!! I'm grateful for angels who sit in CTR 5 primary classes and help teachers dislodge candy so no one has any serious trouble in class.

I have included a very handsome picture of my sons in their church jackets from today because I have no video footage of the actual choking incident (thank heavens because I'm sure it would have been me running in circles in the background screaming "is he choking do you think he's choking?" while JoAn saved the town).

Congratulations you've reached the end of my story,
Kamarah