Michelle Obama recently revealed that she casually saved a friend who was choking on food while they were out at dinner.
The former first lady made the revelation during a conversation with her brother, Craig Robinson, and comedian Kevin Hart on her and Craig’s podcast, “IMO,” in an episode released on Wednesday.
The trio were talking about health scares when Obama brought up the incident.
“I gave one of my girlfriends the Heimlich maneuver at dinner,” she said, to the amazement of Robinson.
Obama explained that she was eating dinner with her friend, her daughter Malia Obama, and two of Malia’s friends.
“We’re the same age and you know, you start having… swallowing problems,” Obama said.
“Things just stop. But she had chewed her food — she had told me before that she had this esophageal issue where things will get stuck, so I knew that about her.”
At one point during the dinner, the woman stood up and coughed, Obama said.
“I think she coughed up something, and it got stuck in her throat,” she recalled. “She was straining, and I said, ‘Are you OK?’” to which the woman shook her head.
Obama then positioned herself behind her friend and began performing the Heimlich maneuver.
“I had never done the Heimlich before, and it dislodged it. It just popped up right away,” she said.
Once everything was fine, Obama turned her attention to her daughter and the two friends, who had “pushed away from the table” when the incident began.
“I looked at the kids and I was like, ‘What were you all doing?’” she asked them.
“They were like, ‘You’re right,’” Obama said. “‘We were useless.’ They realized that that was a mother moment.”
Hart quipped that the tale wasn’t just a “casual story.”
“That’s one you’ve got to pull out at some dinners. That’s actually a story,” he said.
“Yeah, I saved a life,” Obama responded.
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