Monday, August 4, 2008

Red Crossing



This past weekend I decided to take a CPR/First Aid certification course with the Red Cross. My desire to do this came out of some convoluted ideas about being a good citizen and spur-of-the-moment decision making that a click or two and an idle moment on the internet can offer.

My class was held in a miserable windowless cinder block room deep in the boonies of Union City. Union City is one of those sad towns of central California you read about in Steinbeck novels, only not as romantic. There's a street sign (the kind on a stoplight, official and everything) that has two arrows pointing in different directions and reads "Target" and "Circut City". Like, this is Target and Circut City street?

Our instructor was a man named Dave, who seemed to use the class as a vehicle for telling gruesome personal anecdotes as much as a means to teach us CPR and first aid. Apparently, Dave had been the Sheriff/Chief of Police/miner of some kind in a small town in Utah for several years, and had also served as the interim EMT until real medical personnel could arrive from fifty miles away. "Yep," he said. "I have to tell y'all to use a breathing barrier cause that's what the Red Cross recommends. But lotsa times you don't have a breathing barrier, and you just gotta do mouth to mouth. Remember to plug the nose, or you'll get a face fulla boogers." Charming man, Dave. A lot of his stories sounded suspiciously like lies. He described giving someone the Heimlich maneuver (which they don't call the Heimlich maneuver, by the way) at an Outback Steakhouse after walking up to an old man choking on a shrimp. The way he described the scene, play by play, sounded exactly like the part in "Mrs. Doubtfire" when Robin Williams (disguised as the housekeeper Mrs. Doubtfire) saves Pierce Brosnan from choking on a shrimp. It's the pivotal scene in the movie, because all of the man-lady makeup comes off, and I remarked (kind of under my breath) after Dave told his story that it sounded just like Mrs. Doubtfire. He laughed uncomfortably, which I took to mean he was either an exaggerator or a liar. Perhaps both.

A lot of the class participants were there because they were teachers, or had to complete the course for work. There were two pregnant couples present, one with a particularly wild-eyed mother, who insisted on telling everyone that this was the second time she'd taken the course, (the first time was before they had their first baby) and that she never let anyone without a CPR certification NEAR her daughter! I can appreciate being cautious, but sometimes these things serve as forums for people to congratulate themselves on being responsible citizens. Which is a good thing, really. But I wish the shrill, self-righteous attitude didn't come with it. Everyone had an aunt or a coworker or had witnessed a stranger have some terrible accident. "This isn't group therapy, people," I felt like saying more than once, but didn't, because generally that makes one look like an asshole.

The CPR training itself was useful. I'd taken courses before, but it's been a long while. We got to practice on alien dummies and babies with removable faces. And on one another, which is always sort of awkward, even if you're just pretending to give the other person mouth-to-mouth, and instead are repeating "breath, breath" right over their faces. The first aid training was a little bit of a joke-- it reminded me of driver's ed in high school, when we watched episodes of "Red Asphalt" which were basically cautionary tales of brains and guts spilled across the highway. I mean, if I'm actually going hiking and my buddy Marvin falls and breaks his leg, I suppose I will be a bit better off having watched an instructional video. But not by much. In either scenario, I'd probably scream for help and avoid touching poor Marvin's leg if possible.

Sharks and their attacks have been a theme at our house the past few weeks (Bryan, boogie boarding, etc.). In honor of Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, our landlady Phyllis (who lives next door) had us over to watch Jaws. That's her in the costume. She made it herself, and is quite proud of it. I fell asleep halfway through in Phyllis' "Cadillac chair" (a nice, broken in Laze-Boy)

This is the most useful thing I learned this weekend, in reference to poisonous snakes that can bite you and make you die:

Red touching yellow, he's a deadly fellow.
Red touching black, he's a friendly Jack.

As always, watch out for snakes, sharks, and please, take CPR. It's for the children.

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