Hero, 5, Can Do It but Can’t Say It

Five-year-old Brent Meldrum of Lynn, Mass., saved the life of his girlfriend by using the Heimlich maneuver, but he can’t even pronounce it. He calls it “the time-life remover.” “She (turned) almost full blue,” Brent said of Tanya Branden, 6, who had a piece of hard candy lodged in her throat. “My mother was screaming at me to get away from her. I ignored her. I knew what to do. I said to my mother, ‘I saw this on “Benson,” ’ “ referring to the ABC situation comedy. “I lifted her up and banged her on her feet. She bended over and she coughed and it plopped out.” Soon, a crowd of reporters descended on Brent, who remained somewhat cool about the publicity. “I’m not even 6 yet!” he said, a mite peeved. “Everybody’s calling me. When I’m watching cartoons, it’s brrrng, brrrng, brrrng,” said Brent, who wants to be a fireman, policeman, farmer and plumber when he grows up. “I saved a little girl’s life. I feel good.” And did Tanya give her big hero a kiss? “Uh-uh,” she said. “He’s my boyfriend and my hero. But I never let him kiss me.”

--The poet Robert Service probably didn’t have the strange risings and settings of the sun in Kotzebue, Alaska, in mind when he wrote: “There are strange things done in the midnight sun.” On Friday, for example, the day will begin in this Eskimo village with a sunset a shade after midnight. The sun will rise at 5:53 a.m. and set for the second time at 11:56 p.m. “Somebody’s probably playing jokes on you. The sun only sets once,” Don Koutchak, a National Weather Service meteorological technician in Kotzebue, told a United Press International reporter. Koutchak then rechecked his sunrise and sunset tables. “That’s pretty strange. We’ll have two sunsets in one day,” he agreed. Actually, the double sunset in one day of the year is explained by Kotzebue’s latitude, longitude and time zone, said Brian Lynn, a meteorologist in Fairbanks. To put this in perspective: Friday’s first sunset really belongs to Thursday, which began with Wednesday’s sunset. So say the experts.

--A quiet sleep suddenly turned into a nightmare for George Huson of Friendswood, Tex. Awakened in the dead of night by neighbors, Huson quickly grasped the reason for their alarm. A runaway bulldozer was plowing down his garage. “It’s not the kind of thing you expect to hear when you’re asleep in the privacy of your own home,” Huson said. “I wish they had been kidding.” Police said they arrested two 20-year-olds and two 15-year-olds who were out for a joy ride. The garage, a backyard fence, a motor boat and a new car were damaged in the incident. “We just took delivery on the car five hours before this happened,” Huson said. “It was a present for my wife.”