One certification down...

...it is official, I'm re-certified to perform CPR. Granted, the last time I did this was in high school, but, believe me, despite the passage of time and change in protocol it didn't need to take the whole 3 hours.

Dear Lord, it was painful to sit through the video and multiple badly acted examples while we learned how to blow in someone's mouth and compress their chest. Clearly it was a room of more thoughtful people than I as they asked concerned questions about having to cut someone's clothes off and make them naked potentially in a crowded venue like the T to perform CPR. The presenter's response was always the same "they are dead when you do it, so either they stay dead or you might bring them back to life." I agree with him on that. Desperate times call for desperate measures and I'm thinking that my boobs hanging out in public might be the least of my concerns if I'm dying of heart failure.

In recent months, NPR ran two stories about CPR. One was that group has released a study showing that the best song to have in your head while doing compressions is Staying Alive by the Bee Gees. Title irony aside, it has the right number of beats per minute to perform your 30 chest compressions. The other study, however, showed that CPR is fairly ineffective in saving a life. I think the statistic goes up when you add in an AED (ticker shocker), but those aren't quite as common as they will be in coming years.

One of the weirdest parts of the 3 hours was the creepy flirtation that went on between the two presenters. The guy was probably in his 50's, football coach and biology teacher by day, overly talkative CPR trainer by night. The woman looked to be in her early 20's and is about to start a nursing program. He was married and made frequent references to his wife and their relationship yet it was coupled with all kind of sexual innuendo with his fellow presenter. She responded in kind and the two of them seemed more interested in each other at times than in actually communicating with us. That alone cast a strange pall on the 3 hours.

In any event, another yoga weekend down, one more to go.