EMS

'I feel that if you have to embellish the things that you've done when you tell stories, it.........it takes the genuineness out of the experience' he said as he leaned casually on the opened refrigerator door. He nodded his head once more, turned towards the opened fridge again and took out a piece of pizza that was loosely sealed in a ziplock bag. He was not talking to me, so I kept walking and entered the next room where the TV was on the History Chanel. The volume was down, but the scene was pretty descriptive: two young boys around 7 or 8 years old were standing holding onto pillars. It looked like ancient Greece or Rome. Two women came up and tore the backs of the little boys' tunics down the center and laid their backs bare. A man stood up behind them, holding a bull-whip in each hand - his long dark tresses looking like Fabio as he cracked each whip. He began whipping the boys as they clung to the pillars, and suddenly the little '-...............volume..............+' thing came onto the tv. Someone was turning up the volume. The narrator said something about how this is the training of the young men who were to grow up to be a part of the 300 who faced the entire Persian Army. 'They were taught not to cry' the narrator said, and then I looked around and the younger one of the 2 had turned up the volume and then left the room. I diverted my attention to my studies. The One with the pizza came in, turned the volume down again, and slapped a green-camouflage paperback textbook on the coffee table in front of me. 'THERE!' he said with a smile, 'that is my military medic book...basically the same info, just not as much.' He was my EMS instructor, and was also in the national guard as a medic. 'Well,' I said, 'at least it has real pictures! Not the drawings that we have in ours.' I said as I flipped through the pages. 'I wish we had actual photographs instead of drawings. I feel like they dumb it down'. 'I guess that is one thing to appreciate about that book' he said, and took a huge bite of pizza - his 3rd piece in 3 hrs. The publisher is AAOS, the same as my EMS textbook, and my first exposure to this system. I believe that they feel they have to dumb most of the clips down for us as civilians. But, if we are going to be working with this stuff, why not just show us how it is going to be, rather than drawing in sterile lines with pink ink for skin color? Our instructors are not afraid to show us exactly what we will be going through with graphic pictures of some of their calls. But the drawings and sterile lines are almost as confusing to me as how women can keep their long tresses while in the military, and the men have to shave their heads (?). I really don't get it? Long hair will get into anyone's way, and I thought that was one of the main reasons why men are required to shave their heads? No one, thus far, has been able to give me a valid answer. When I ask guys about it, they either just smile at me, or they add something to the effect of, 'Women are easier on the eyes with long hair'. The same thing happened here, and I believe that I 'set' my jaw. Conversation ended.
I am now an EMT-IV and love the job. In the fall, I will be going back to get my medic at Southeastern Institute...Lord willing. I have not yet felt that I should not take this course of action, but sometimes I am not aware of it until the very end - when I am actually listening.

Je Vois

Today is my first day of EMT-IV summer classes. I have not yet been to class, but I sit here waiting to go. Hello Future! I've always wondered what you would look like. You are different from what I had imagined, but my imagination could only go so far and could only imagine what I had already experienced. I often wondered if you would even come. Oh yes, I will admit that I wondered, sometimes fiercely. I still wonder what others of your relatives I will meet, or if I will meet them. But I am learning to wait for you with temperance, while riding Life in The Present. I will keep watching as Future slowly and steadily morphs into Present, and then Past. May I treat you with respect, and may you grant me Wisdom.