As you all know, May 8th was Mothers Day. A slightly lesser known fact is that it was also my birthday. Some in my family will know that historically when Mothers Day and my birthday collide, I tend to have pretty bad days. Suffice it to say, I've spent more than one MD/BDay in the emergency room.
So leading up to May 8th this year there was the obligatory banter from my family wondering if I was nervous/ planning to spend the day indoors/ going to wrap myself in bubble wrap/ etc. (Not to mention a a small amount of actual anxiety) However as the day drew to a close, it appeared that I would avoid the curse this year...then we had dinner.
Admittedly, what happened at dinner could have just been a coincidence, and as I'm not an authority on curses, hexes, or witchcraft generally, I admit that I don't know if it's possible for such a plague to express itself in another person. If it is, it appears that this year I ported my BDay misfortune to my poor mother-in-law.
We just sat down to a nice MD/BDay dinner when Marilyn took her first bite of steak (which I prepared no less) and began having a strange hiccup-type sound in her throat. She took a drink of water to try and stop the noise which apparently only lodged the obstruction deeper at which point she began choking in earnest.
All I could think of as I quickly stood up and walked around the table was that while I had learned the Heimlich in Boy Scouts many years ago, I had never actually had to administer the maneuver. I was pretty sure the most likely outcome was that I was going to break Marilyn's ribs and still not solve the problem. I executed the technique to the best of my recollection, gave my mother-in-law a couple of good jerks, and viola', out popped the culprit and breathing returned to normal. It was a scary couple of moments, but I'm happy to report that Marilyn is OK.
So as I said, I'm not sure if this little episode can be blamed on the aforementioned curse, but it does seem like an eerie coincidence.
On another note, I gave my mother-in-law the gift of life for Mothers Day. What did you get yours?
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