Keith McEly
Aug 22, 2017 · 4 min read

Always Chew Your Steak

My dad has never been that emotional of a guy for the totality of my life. I’m sure he was a little more expressive when he was a child. But in the years after I was born, he was already a fairly hardened guy, despite being quite young.. Some tough stuff happened to him in childhood and I think as he matured, he saw emotionality as weakness.

As a child, my dad’s version of love was a combination of hands off parenting and tough love. For the first few years of my life, he pretty much worked all the time and it wasn’t until my younger sister was born that be began being around more. My memories of him from the early days were very limited.

The biggest point of bonding between my father and I ended up being Cub Scouts. As a kid, I was a fairly bookish child, constantly reading and daydreaming. I loved telling stories. I loved music. I wasn’t much concerned with mechanical things, or athletics, or manly stuff. So when I began showing a real interest in Cub Scouts, I think my dad saw it as an opportunity for us to spend more time together and connect.

In a short amount of time, my dad became one of the elder leaders of our Pack and it became a big part of his identity. We spent more time together than we had all of the years leading up to that combined.

Despite the at times, lack of warmth from my father, we really did begin to bond over Scouting and the extra time together. I began to love camping and the outdoors after not being interested previously. We would have big camping trips with the entire Pack of kids that were so fun. I eventually would go away from longer trips that lasted weeks. They still remains some of my fondest memories.

On one our first big outings together, to Bull’s Island Recreation Area in New Jersey, I had my first experience with realizing my own fragility.

For this particular trip, the Pack had purchased some large steaks and a whole host of potatoes for baking. The idea was to cook them over a campfire and have a large communal feast at the end of the night after a long day of making camp and hiking. I was very excited. It was one of my first times being around the older kids and I really wanted to fit in. As the steaks were finished on the fire and placed in front of us, I hungrily began to dig in.

The kids all sat at one large wooden table. The adults across camp at another large wooden table. In the middle of camp a large campfire was burning.

As I began devouring the steak, I listened to the kids around me tell stories and I felt at home. A few minutes into eating however, in a rush to eat the delicious feast, I swallowed part of the steak without properly chewing. I knew as soon as I swallowed I had made a mistake. The piece of steak became lodged in my windpipe. I was horrified. The other children were all joyously telling each other stories, everyone caught up in the moment.

I began frantically making the universal sign of choking. Panic began setting in. I couldn’t breath. I kept making the sign over and over, but no one seemed to notice, caught up in their stories. Panic and anxiety began to overtake me after a minute passed and no one noticed or came to my assistance.

I got up and began flailing around. I don’t think anyone understood why or what was happening. At this point I ran over to the campfire- I wanted to somehow catch someone’s attention. I kept grabbing at my throat, hoping I could dislodge the piece of meat, but nothing seemed to work.

It was at this moment something happened that I’ve thought back on often. My dad snapped around from the other side of camp and saw me. He knew something was wrong. At this point he ran over and slapped me on the back with incredible force. The steak piece flew out of my mouth and into the fire. I was okay. I hugged him and told him I loved him. He told me just had a feeling all of a sudden that something was wrong and when he saw me, he knew what it was and that he had rush to help me.

***

These days my dad and I don’t talk all that often. We’re both busy people. Our relationship has at times been good over the years, but at this point it’s just kinda okay. I don’t say that in a disparaging way, just that we’re on separate coasts, we barely ever see other, and we’re in different phases of our life.

I think back a lot to this moment where he saved me though. There was some kind of weird telepathy that happened that night, something that gave him a signal that he needed to act fast. I truly believe had he not felt that feeling, I very easily could have died. This was probably the first time in my life I ever felt like I truly dodged a mortal bullet. And I internally thank him for it a lot whenever I think back on this story.

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