Nurse Saves Boy, Boy Saves Nurse

[Amadeus]

From CBS News:

 

A boy whose life was saved by an off-duty nurse had the opportunity to save his savior's life seven years later.

 

The first incident happened in 1999, when Kevin Stephen went into cardiac arrest after being hit by a baseball bat at a game. Penny Brown, a nurse, was at that game and saved Stephen's life. In a remarkable twist of fate, Stephen was able to return the favor when Brown started choking at a restaurant where he was working.

 

It was lucky that Brown was at the game at all in 1999. She was supposed to be working, but had a slow night at the hospital. So she decided to go to her son's game and was there when Stephen took the blow.

 

"He was just in the wrong place," Brown said. "Another little boy was warming up, and Kevin, unfortunately, took a bat right directly in his chest. So he immediately fell to the ground and I had witnessed what had occurred." Brown ran down from the stands and performed CPR.

 

Stephen went on with his life but felt he never had the chance to thank Brown properly until, by chance, she ended up at the restaurant where he works. And, again, it was a lucky twist of fate that brought the two together. Stephen hadn't expected to work that night because it was exam week at his school. But because he didn't have any tests that day, his manager slipped him onto the schedule.

 

When Brown started to choke, Stephen rushed over to perform the Heimlich maneuver but had no idea the woman in his arms was Penny Brown. "I did the Heimlich and she, like, sat down and just kept trying to catch her breath," Stephen told Syler. "My mom told me that that was Mrs. Brown who had saved my life."

 

The extraordinary events have given both heroes a lot to think about and Stephen says he feels it is more than coincidence that brought them together. "I think, maybe, it was like divine intervention," he said. "I was just in shock. I was almost in disbelief."

 

Just a nice story, that shows how full of surprises life can be....

 

 

Oh, and this one made me smile as well:

 

 

Litter in a bottle

 

NAPEAGUE, New York — A boat captain who sent a message out to sea in a bottle says he received a reply from Britain — accusing him of littering.

 

“I kind of felt like no good deed goes unpunished,” Harvey Bennett, 55, told the East Hampton Star.

 

The plastic bottle was one of five that Bennett placed in the ocean off New York’s Long Island in August.

 

Last month, he excitedly opened a letter from England, and was stunned by the reply:

 

“I recently found your bottle while taking a scenic walk on the beach by Poole Harbour. While you may consider this some profound experiment on the path and speed” of “oceanic currents, I have another name for it, litter.

 

“You Americans don’t seem to be happy unless you are mucking about somewhere,” says the letter, signed by Henry Biggelsworth of Bournemouth, in Dorset County.

 

Go, tell him !

[The Godfather of Manx House]

The story of Harvey Bennett and his ocean-crossing bottle has been widely reported during the past week. The basic facts are as follows: Harvey Bennett, the owner of a tackle shop in Amagansett, New York, has for years been throwing messages-in-bottles into the Atlantic. He usually never sees the bottles again. But on January 24 he received a package in the mail containing one of his discarded bottles which, apparently, had floated all the way to Bournemouth, England. The finder of the bottle (who knew Bennett's address from the business card in the bottle) had written this note to Bennett:

 

I recently found your bottle while taking a scenic walk on a beach by Poole Harbour. While you may consider this some profound experiment on the path and speed of oceanic currents, I have another name for it - litter. You Americans don't seem to be happy unless you are mucking up somewhere. If you wish to foul your own nest, all well and good. But please refrain in the future from fouling mine.

 

The strangeness of this reply has puzzled everyone, and even prompted the Daily Telegraph to apologize for their countryman's lack of humor. But Newsday smells something fishy with this seafaring bottle story. They don't suspect Harvey Bennett is making up a hoax, but they think someone may be playing a prank on him. They point out that the name of the humorless British correspondent, "Mr. Bigglesworth," is also the name of Dr. Evil's cat in the Austin Powers movies. In addition:

 

A search of public records turned up no Henry Biggelsworth in Poole or neighboring Bournemouth... On a customs label affixed to the package, the sender used a slightly different spelling - Bigglesworth - when signing his name... The sender left out the "e" in Bournemouth on the return address. There is also no street in Bournemouth called "The Bowery." And the postal code should have begun with "BH" not "BJ."

 

Assuming that Bennett is trustworthy, I'm guessing that one of three things could have happened: a) The bottle really did make its way to England, and the reply was meant to be tongue-in-cheek; B) The bottle was found by someone in America and shipped to England, from where it was sent back to Bennett... making this a bottle version of the traveling-gnome prank; or c) the whole thing was engineered by some of Bennett's friends as a prank on him. They put one of his business cards in a bottle and arranged for it to be sent to him from England.

 

...ah well ...

 

...GOMH*...