all choked up

saturday we decided to do dinner and a movie once again. the weekend prior we saw revolutionary road and this past weekend we saw doubt at the dragonfly theater. both were great movies and i love that you can enjoy a beer or in my case a glass of wine while watching.

anyways, for dinner we headed over to outback steakhouse in blowing rock. there was a 20 minute wait so we decided to sit and eat at the bar. the carolina/maryland game had just gone into overtime, so it was a perfect choice for us. eat, drink and watch. after we had gotten our food there was a little bit of commotion on the other side of aaron. one of the teenage boys also eating at the bar had apparently inhaled a piece of steak. he wasn't choking, but could feel it lodged in his throat. him and his dad went to the bathroom to see if they could dislodge it. 10 minutes went by and aaron decided to check in on them. he came back and said the boy was trying to make himself throw up, thinking that would move the meat. he's talking and breathing fine, just uncomfortable. another 10 minutes go by and our waitress sends a co-worker in to check on them. aaron goes back with him. a few minutes later aaron reports back to us saying he's still trying to vomit, breathing and talking fine but his dad just asked the employee how long it would take an ambulance to get there. which aaron doesn't think is necessary. if the dad is overly-concerned he can easily drive the kid to the emergency room which is pretty much around the corner. a few minutes later a fire truck, ambulance and another medical vehicle pull up in the parking lot, lights blazing and sirens roaring. four technicians head for the bathroom.

"this is a gross misuse of emergency personal and totally unnecessary." aaron tells me. with the situation now under control we decide to pay and head out. when we get our bill our waitress says for being a good samaritan our entire meal was comped. it totally caught us off-guard. we thanked her and told her she didn't need to do that. she insisted. we thanked her and she thanked aaron again for his help.

so there's a fire truck, ambulance and another emergency vehicle sitting in the parking lot and there are about five cars trolling the lot for a parking space. which i thought was odd. if i saw a fire truck with the lights on sitting in front of a restaurant, i'd probably find another place to eat. i just thought that was weird. well when we pulled out of the parking lot, i saw all the technicians leaving the restaurant sans kid. he must have dislodged the food on his own, which aaron predicted would happen.