Great news: I may or may not be certified in CPR, which will give me, for those of you keeping track at home, approximately one useful life skill.
I don’t just go around looking for life skills. I was asked to take a CPR class by the principal of the mesivta in which I teach Language Arts, who recently found out that, under New Jersey law, there needs to be five teachers in the school who are certified. Five. That’s the law. This is a hard-and-fast number that doesn’t take into account whether it’s a smallish mesivta with four classes total or a public high school with thousands of students. The number is five. It also doesn’t take into account that, as far as I know, all the teachers who participated in this were afternoon teachers, so if anything chas v’shalom goes down anytime between 7:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. or during night seder or also in the dorm at night, they’re plum out of luck, or they have to rely on whichever kids have lifeguard certification.
In fact, I don’t even think there are ever five teachers in the building at the same time. The fifth person in our CPR class was the principal.
So I agreed. I figured it’s a good thing to be certified, especially through a course that is free (to me). Not that I think anything is going to happen. Baruch Hashem, in my 17 years of teaching in this mesivta, there has never been any kind of issue for which I might have needed this knowledge. And you can say, “Yeah, but people are getting older!” The only person in the classroom getting older is me. The students keep staying the same age, replaced every year by a new crop of students that are hardier. (They must be. They’re definitely not smarter.) So most likely, this is going to be one teacher doing it on another teacher. We’re all in this together.
It also happens to be that I’ve never seen anything go down. Not just in yeshiva. Anywhere. I always walk into a room and people say, “Whoa, did you see what just happened?” And I say, “No!” and then no one fills me in, no matter how many times I ask. They keep discussing it, and I have to put it together, from context, in case my wife asks me later.
I also don’t think anything is ever going to go down, because in our yeshiva, if anyone is feeling even slightly off, they use it as an excuse to go home. I don’t think someone is pushing themselves to the point of a cardiac event. Except maybe in the beis midrash. But if I’m summoned to run up two flights of stairs to do CPR on a talmid in the beis midrash, someone’s going to first have to do it on me.
So I joined the class, despite my wife later pointing out that I am not really good in an emergency situation. I tend to overthink everything first, and then I come back later and say, “Ok, here’s what I should have done.” But the thought here is that perhaps through the course—especially the part where we learn by continuously attempting to bring a plastic dummy to life—I can internalize what I’m taught and actually be able to save someone, provided something goes down before I forget this stuff. There are a lot of details to remember.
So we had to take a whole first-aid course, consisting of 3 sessions during what would otherwise have been regularly-scheduled classes, but those are the sacrifices we make for our students. Which parents were going to complain?
“No, I don’t want you to learn life-saving skills. I want you to teach my son about polynomials!”
The class requirements were that we would learn more than just CPR. For example, we also had to be trained in the use of an AED. This stands for Automated External Defibrillator, I found out. I haven’t been keeping up on defibrillators, B’H, but apparently the new ones are not only automated, they’re also external. There’s a label on them that says, “For external use only.”
The third thing they’re required to teach us is the Heimlich Maneuver, although it’s no longer widely called the Heimlich, the instructor told us. It’s now called “Stomach Thrusts and Back Blows,” for legal reasons. Even though Heimlich is definitely faster to say. You have to look at the guy who’s choking and say, “Do I have your consent to do Stomach Thrust and Back Blows?” And then when he looks confused, you say, “Heimlich. I’m asking if I could do the Heimlich.” We can’t even abbreviate this longer name. What are we going to call it? STABB? That’s a good mnemonic device for class: “If someone is choking, STABB him! …No, no, don’t actually stab him. I brought a dummy.”
“Do I have your consent to STABB you? With two B’s?”
“You mean like insects?” he would ask, if he could talk.
If he asks that, we learned, he doesn’t need the Heimlich.
That was one thing that we learned in class that we didn’t already know. In fact, most of us think we know a lot of this stuff, but I definitely learned things I didn’t know before, or never really thought about, over the course of our sessions. Here’s some of what I learned:
1. You’d think that teachers would make the best students, but looking around, I was the only one taking notes. Well, me and the principal. And we all know why I was taking notes. It wasn’t for the test.
2. During our first session, the instructor gave us a 98-page handout, which to my knowledge not a single one of us read.
3. At some point during the first session, the instructor told us how to find our pulse on our necks, and one of the teachers, as it turned out, did not have a pulse. At least he couldn’t find it. You know how some places are not specific on who they hire—all you need is a pulse? Well, in our yeshiva, you don’t even need a pulse. But you do need to know CPR.
4. During the second session, the instructor gave out resuscitation masks, which are designed so you don’t have to put your mouth on the victim, c’v. Or the dummy, because who knows where that’s been. Only about half the class remembered to bring their masks back for the third session.
5. Then the instructor said there was going to be a test, and we all panicked. “What? Why do we have to know this? When is this ever gonna come up?” All of our pulses quickened, except for that of the guy without a pulse. Okay, so we didn’t say this stuff. But it is definitely what our students would have said if we taught this.
6. We took this course in December. I remember, because I was on Week 3 of what turned out to be a 6-week throat thing. I spent the entire course trying not to cough. The last thing I wanted was to get germs on the dummy. Who knows where that’s been.
7. That said, we weren’t given the test until late February, and it was with a 2-hour warning, most of which we spent teaching, so I had to quickly print out my iffy notes moments before the test, hoping that the mere act of printing them would get me to remember everything.
8. The instructor didn’t show up on test day. There was just a pile of tests, and the principal was supposed to proctor, although he was taking a test himself. Two teachers took it during one period of the day, while I and the teacher with no pulse took it during the following period. As did the principal, who took the test twice.
9. I was the last person to start the test, and the first person to realize that the instructions said we needed number 2 pencils.
10. After digging around in his office a bit, the principal found a box of compasses (the math kind), and we pulled the little golf pencils out of those and awkwardly filled in our tests. None of us had any idea if those pencils were in fact #2, and also none of those pencils had erasers.
11. Anyway, this was why the principal took his test again. The second time in pencil.
12. Basically everyone cheated. We were allowed to, according to the official rules. Which made no sense. In real life, you don’t get to look things up in an emergency situation. Though the AED has one button, after which it literally says its instructions out loud.
So if any kind of situation goes down, c’v, I would say that the students are in okay hands. I think. If all the teachers work together. And I say, “I think,” because as of right now, we’re still waiting for our grades.
So perhaps I could use a real chazarah on the rules. Maybe I’ll go through what I learned in a couple of weeks, in article form, using my notes and maybe the handout, which I still have not read. It’s in a safe place on my desk, where I can whip it out if an emergency happens during the workday when I’m home alone.
I mean, next week I have to write a Pesach article, so I’m booked for that, but maybe afterward. Don’t choke on anything until then. Over Pesach, I mean.
Lean left.
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia and is the author of seven books, published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send questions, comments, or ideas to MSchmutter@gmail.com. Read more of Mordechai Schmutter’s articles at 5TJT.com.
