Last year I took a CPR class. I already had a working idea of what to do in an emergency from what I learned in the Marine Corps, but somehow something in my pea brain reasoned that I could ward off disaster by taking a class.

Today, I was standing at the kitchen sink, minding my own business, when my little Phee-Phee barreled around the corner clutching her throat and turning purple. SHe was choking on a grape. My skin puckered. I grabbed her, turned her around, kicked her feet apart and did exactly what I learned - in the Marines. I made my hand into a beer mug fist, turned it sideways and heimliched the hell out of her. She caught her breath, screamed for water, which she then puked up and began choking again. SO I heimliched her all the way down the stairs and into the front yard in the middle of a thunderstorm in my poor stocking feet. I always run outside in an emergency. God forbid the sky is raining railroad spikes one day. So, there we were, backlit by streaks of lightning, lurching around like quasimodo until at last the grape was swallowed.

That was some scary shit.