Megan Gething, a 12-year-old from Rockport, Massachusetts, was playing in a marsh (??) when her friend Mackenzie George slipped and cut her leg on a pipe. Aside from the obvious fact that this particular marsh seems pretty unsafe, when George started bleeding profusely Gething knew exactly what to do.
The Gloucester Times reports that Gething acted quickly and wrapped George’s leg in a tourniquet using her friend’s shorts. She might not have known how to do such a thing, though, if she had not been reading the literature of one Suzanne Collins:
While many of the sixth-graders screamed in horror, Megan responded like a trained EMT and created a tourniquet. “I knew it from a book I read,” she said, referencing “The Hunger Games.” “I figured it was a well-known method of stopping bleeding.”
Great to Gething for being a hero. Now, about that marsh. According to the Gloucester Times, the pipe in question that sliced George’s leg and threatened her life was a “metal cofferdam—a welded steel pump.” Why were several sixth graders playing in a marsh under such unsafe conditions, and what is wrong with Rockport that such an environment would not be protected from the likes of youth who could be exposed to such steel pumping? According to Rockportusa.com, which boastingly defines Rockport as “a seacoast village on Cape Ann,” there are many town events happening over the summer months, but none are particularly tailored towards tweens, who don’t normally leap at the opportunity to go to farmer’s markets or pottery classes.
And so while this story may seem like a tale about a young girl whose taste in reading helped save her friend’s life, at its core it is, perhaps, how America’s towns are failing our youth. CLOSE THE MARSH.