Hello, it is I, Max Munk, Henry Heimlich’s arch-rival since medical school. You’ve never heard of me, you say? Ah, well that is an injustice of history.
Think fast: What’s the most common form of public injury? Is it choking? No! That doesn’t even make the top ten. That’s such a stupid answer you might as well say it’s getting hit in the crotch by a baseball, or stepping on a rake only to have the handle shoot up and smack you in the face. God, people are such morons, though with all the press Heimlich’s dumb maneuver gets, you’d be forgiven for believing his lies.
Now riddle me this: How often have you seen anyone choke in public, then someone else comes and actually does the Heimlich on them? I’m 89 years old and I’ve literally never seen it happen, and I’ve eaten at hundreds of sloppy lobster restaurants. Not once! Oh, sure, I’ve seen that ass Heimlich demonstrate it dozens of times with all his showboating: “put your interlocked, clenched fists above the navel,” and “sharply pull back and up under the rib cage six to eight times”—ha! Like anyone can remember all that crap!
Back when we were at Cornell together, that damn Heimlich never shut up about his freaky abdominal thrusts. Once he demonstrated them on Marcia Higgins, who I had a huge crush on, and while he was doing the thrusts I swear that dog Heimlich turned and winked at me. What a pervert!
So, anyway, if not choking, what’s the number one public injury? Good question. Thanks for finally asking it. The answer has been right in front of your face: It’s when you’re walking along and out of nowhere—BOOM—your foot hits a faulty floorboard, a stray rock, or an unexpected crack. Then you trip, and your body goes crashing to the ground like a big sack of humiliated meat. Oof!
Listen up. Tripping is painful. It’s dangerous. People hit their heads and crack their skulls open. People die. Trips may not have a 24/7 media blitz funded by Big Heimlich, but trust, me trips have been maiming, killing, and disgracing us since homo sapiens roamed the savannah. In fact, when a hunter-gatherer tripped, he would often sort of catch himself and break into a sprint, pretending that this is what he meant to do all along. But it never fooled anyone, and many post-trip hominids abandoned their tribes and died in shame. In shame I say!
That’s why I invented the Munk Maneuver. With my patent-pending maneuver, as soon as you see someone trip, you simply dash in front of them, and while keeping your legs strong and stiff, bend your torso at a 60-degree angle, and catch their entire body on your back, saving them from pain, mortification, and probably death.
It’s a perfect maneuver, and yet for decades paramedics and lifeguards and all the medical authorities are all “Heimlich this” and “Heimlich that.” All for an “injury” that takes a full minute to happen. I could start choking, call my lawyer, change my will, then still have enough time to drive home and kiss my wife goodbye before I finished choking. Thanks for nothing, Heimlich, you fraud.
I just wish the Munk Maneuver were around in the 1940s, back when certain people would suffer a bad public trip and survive but then get so embarrassed that they skip their senior prom, break-up with their sweetheart Alice, join the Army, get deployed to fight the Nazis in World War II, then get seriously injured by tripping on a latrine. Then their sergeant calls them “useless” and they get discharged and go work on a farm in Nebraska where they trip on a donkey. Then they get into Cornell.
Do you get it yet, you dumb shits? We don’t need a cure for choking, we need a cure for tripping! I actually asked Heimlich once why he focused on choking, not tripping, and he looked me right in the eye and said, “Anyone can choke. But clumsy people who trip? Maybe they deserve it.” I swear that’s what he said, right to my face.
I’ve been a doctor for five decades. I’ve shown thousands of patients how to prevent a deadly trip. I do it because I care. Where the hell are my how-to posters on all the break room walls across America?
My friends, just imagine a future where everyone knows the Munk Maneuver. What a world that would be! Look, I’m no idealist. I’m not saying there wouldn’t still be wars and such. But there would be fewer foot and head injuries, lower insurance costs, and human lifespans would be 15 years longer by my calculations. Our beloved geeks and oafs would walk with confidence for the first time in history.
Also, why won’t the U.S. Patent Office certify the Munk Maneuver? Heimlich must have gotten to those bastards first.