Near Death Experience

Posted on August 28th, 2008 by admin

Don’t worry! I’m not talking about a near death experience that I had. I’m talking about none other than T’s Daddy-o, Mark. He comments on here once in a while. Not enough though. He says that he feels like he needs to say something profound and intelligent in his comments. I’m not intimidating, am I? Maybe a little. I don’t know. But you don’t have to have something profound to say to comment on PLSF. You can just say ”Hello.” Or “You’re the best blogger in the Universe.” I’m not looking for anything too specific.

Anywho…back to the NDE (Near Death Experience). Mark is a truck driver. That means that he can request the occasional load to Houston. That allows him to stop by and see us every once in a while. Yesterday (Wednesday) he did just that. He got to H-Town at about 3 in the afternoon. He will be spending the night and will deliver his load (car parts or something) to a car place in Houston in the morning. He will then get assigned another load out of Houston. That’s the plan anyway.

Last night we decided to go out to eat to a nice dinner. T owed his Dad some cash and decided to pay him in food instead. Food is actually Marks preferred form of currency. $1.00 is equivalent to about 2 cupcakes. Or something like that. We went to ”Taste of Texas.” It’s a nice restaurant with great steaks. We had gone there before when T’s Mom and Sis were here visiting and knew that Mark would enjoy it too. They have a giant block of cheese that you can cut strips off of at the salad bar. Does that make sense? It’s amazing. It’s YUMMY! I normally don’t eat red meat. I’ve tried to be a vegetarian before. But dang it-I need me some good beef every once in a while.

The NDE actually occurred while we were enjoying out steaks at the Taste of Texas. Mark and I had the same cut of steak, New York Strip to be exact. Mine was well done. I will NOT eat anything but well done meat. I know…I know…it ruins the flavor. Whatev. It gets rid of the raw muscle look and the bacteria. The meat was cooked to perfection. I didn’t even need ketchup to go along with it. Although I would have gladly accepted it had it been offered. Dinner was going along nicely. We were laughing at guys with mullets and doing a little chatting about the family back home. Mark began a story about a family wedding that he recently attended. He stated that he had a rather embarrassing moment. Apparently he choked on a piece of meat at the reception and was doing this weird choking-coughing-can’t breathe type of thing. As he was recalling this moment, he even re-enacted it a bit for us. So we could get the full effect. He said that he doesn’t chew his food enough and finds himself in these coughing bouts every once in a while. He can’t breathe and comes rather close to needing the Heimlich. I don’t see why something like this should happen more than a couple times. Obviously you’d eventually learn your lesson and get scared into properly chewing your food. To avoid both death and public embarassment.

Only a few minutes after Mark finished telling us about his choking spell…he started choking…on his Taste of Texas steak. And it was a full-blown, choking bout. His face got red, he put his hands over his mouth, his eyes were bulging out of his head, and he started making this strange wheezing sound. The wheezing was quickly followed by violent attempts at coughing. Coughing is good. Always encourage someone who is choking to cough. I didn’t do any encouraging. I was in total disbelief that he was actually choking after just telling us a story about how embarassed he had been about choking at the wedding! I think that I buried my face in my napkin and I heard T ask him if he was OK. No answer. More wheezing. I thought for a minute that I should do the Heimlich, but I’ve never actually done it before. Should I call for help? Should I flag down a waiter? Is there a Doctor in the house? I was in shock. After a few minutes, he was finally able to dislodge the giant chunk of steak that he had tried to swallow whole. T and I stared at him like he was some sort of alien. Did that really just happen? Yes. Yes it did. Mark almost passed out and died because he apparently isn’t properly able to chew his food. Srsly!

Maybe next time we take him out to eat I will offer to cut up his food for him so he doesn’t choke to death. I will cut it into tiny pieces. And then remind him to chew each piece 12 times before swallowing. Wait…isn’t that what Moms have to do with their kids?