Boy comes to the rescue of a girl choking on a kiss
NEW MILFORD — It started as an after-school story involving a boy and a girl and a kiss.
Then things got serious.
But it’s not what you think.
The kiss was a Hershey’s Kiss, and the girl was choking on it.
Quick-thinking Callum Brown, a junior at the Canterbury School, performed the Heimlich maneuver on his classmate to dislodge the chocolate drop, and save her from the emergency.
Educators at the private high school confirmed the story on Friday.
“Callum was on his way to junior varsity squash practice when he saw the girl was choking,” said Meredith Berry-Toon, a Spanish teacher familiar with incident. “He was a lifeguard at a summer camp where he learned the Heimlich maneuver.”
Students were crowded in the athletic center lobby shortly before 4 p.m. Thursday to witness Brown’s life-saving skill.
“They were saying ‘Wow, Callum, I didn’t know you could do that,’ ” Berry-Toon said.
The girl, identified only as a freshman from New Milford, thanked Brown before the student body at a school meeting on Friday.
The Heimlich maneuver is an abdominal thrust technique widely used to clear a choking victim’s blocked throat.
But the technique is not always executed as well as Brown did on Thursday.
In the summer, for example, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin cracked U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill’s rib while performing the Heimlich maneuver at a Democratic luncheon.