Television, they say rots your brain, but perhaps that’s untrue. Maybe you learn something while binge-watching for hours upon hours, even if you don’t realize it. To wit: An Arizona man saved the life of a woman by drawing on CPR techniques he learned by watching an episode of the permanently popular program The Office.
Rolling Stone picked up a story from the Arizona Daily Star about a man named Cross Scott, who happened upon a woman slumped over in her car, her lips blue, clearly in need of resuscitation. Scott was not the man for the job…or so he thought.
“I had no idea what I was doing,” Scott told reporters. And yet he managed to spring into action when necessary. Not only did he resourcefully put a big rock underneath one of the tires when he realized the car was still moving, he also knew to smash the window to check the woman’s pulse. She had none.
It was then that an episode of The Office popped into his head. It was “Stress Relief,” from about halfway through the fifth season, in which Stanley suffers a heart attack, prompting Steve Carell’s Michael Scott (no relation to the real-life hero) to try and get everyone educated about basic CPR techniques. After some requisite blunders, Michael learns how to get into the groove by singing The Bee Gees’ “Staying Alive,” which, yes, has the right rhythm one needs when performing CPR.
And so Cross Scott straddled this stranger and pumped on her chest while singing along to a song made famous by the fourth highest grossing motion picture of 1977.
After a minute, the woman began to breathe again. She threw up, rolled onto her side, and 10 minutes later the paramedics arrived, ready to tell Scott that had he not intervened with his Office knowledge, things might have turned out quite differently.
So there you have it: TV — and John Travolta movies — save lives. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.
(Via Rolling Stone)
