Has Anyone Saved Your Life?

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One of my first jobs was at a place called Starline. It was a combination of a print works and offices and I was in one of the offices. There was a typing pool at the back of Accounts and I was in there amongst 2 other people, from memory, as it was way back in the early to mid 80s. What I CAN remember (vividly) however, were the times our Chairman came round, armed with a big jar of sweets. Sometimes it would be Uncle Joe's Mint Balls and other times it would be hard (but chewy) Strawberry Bon-Bons. On this occasion he provided the latter. "Bon-Bon?" said Mr Stonier, smiling at me. "Yes please!" and I took just the one bon-bon. It was quite large. In fact, most bon-bons back then were large. Anyway, upon putting this huge bon-bon into my gob, another girl in the office said something that made me laugh. I hadn't even had the chance to bite into this bon-bon, the damn thing shot right down my throat. To my horror, it stopped about half-way down and I started to choke. At first, people nearby thought I was doing this as some sort of sick joke and started to gather round, probably not realising how serious this was becoming. Once I started turning blue Val sprung into action and tried doing that Heimlich manoevre. That didn't work so she actually got her long finger with sharp fingernail at the end and PUSHED the sweet downwards. Amazingly, this actually worked (obviously) 'cos I'm still here to tell the tale. It didn't take me long to 'recover' and I thanked Val who just said, "Get a hot chocolate out of the vending machine!" as it didn't look like she wanted a fuss made out of the incident. After that day I got along better with Val. She was talked about behind her back as she suffered from B.O. I reckon (now that I'm older and wiser) that it was linked to her hysterectomy she'd had done. It brought on the menopause early, for a start, but me being very young back then, I had no clue about what she was going through. She was a very courageous woman and she'll be getting on in years now if she's still alive.