Preparedness.

Do you know any first aid?

Our son is just shy of a year old. He’s not walking yet, and his crawl is more of a leisurely commando scramble. You’d think it would be easy for me to keep ahead of him. Not so.

Yesterday he started choking. He’d found a coin that had fallen out of my pocket and decided it looked tasty. Kid’s going to love the chocolate money when he gets bigger, I guess.

I occasionally do some training and examining for my dad’s business. Yesterday morning I was very glad. Part of the idea of a first aid course is to get the really important stuff locked into your brain so tightly that when you need to do it doesn’t actually need much thinking. When Reuben started choking I had him flipped over and the coin out of there before I’d fully registered what was going on. He was fine.

Of course, I then needed someone else to come along and get my heart going again.

Would you know what to do? Think about it. The more people who know some first aid, the better for everyone. There’s courses all over the place, all the time. Ask your local community centre, or FE college; check out St. John’s or the Red Cross; youth groups and community groups often have courses going. Get together with some friends and colleagues and go in on a course.

Odds are it’ll never matter. But maybe it will.