So Betty and I were doing our usual daily thing of walking to the cafe to get a sammich. Such a nice pretty day. Mmmhmmm. We were walking and nodding as usual to the people who smile at us, which is everybody because babies are just crazy cute. It's amazing how even tough, gangsta lookin' dudes will look all Hard and as soon as they catch sight of the baby they're all like "whuuuhuhuhu. Bay-bee. How's that baaaybeee?" It's like encountering the Cowardly Lion on a daily basis.
We got to the cafe which is owned by a Japanese guy who speaks veyr good but heavily accented english and always says "Hellloooo. Two-months Baby! Hello Two-Months Baby!" It's great. We've met cops and manual workers and old ladies and young irritable people at the cafe and well hey love the baby. We've encountered people from Africa, Australia and Iowa and they all fawn over the baby. It's partially because now she looks at people and stares at them and loves them. Loves Them. I swear if she could talk she'd be saying "Mom, I love this lady. She's such a pretty lady. I want to take her home and play with her because I love her Mom." So Hooray the cafe and now we're walking home.
On the way home there is a dude lying down on the sidewalk. I don't have to step over him or anything but I walk by him and I actually think "That looks nice. If I could just nap in the sun today, I would totally do it." And then I realize I caught sight of this dude and he had been sitting up in the Bus Stop shelter. I see a bus driving coming the opposite direction look at him and look at me and I turn around and go back. I have the baby in the belly pack which makes bending over difficult and wierd and I say, as you might expect, "Sir. Sir, are you okay?" Nothing. Louder, "Sir, wake up! Are you okay! Wake up!" Nothing. He's breathing and his color is okay. I shake him doing the whole "Sir, sir are you okay?" thing. I pound on his back and shake his shoulder again. Nothing. A busload of elementary school kids spills out of a bus. I look up at the bus driver saying loudly and motioning obviously "A Phone. Do you have a phone? Do you have a phone?" He's looking at me like I'm asking him if he has a Flamingo. Do you have a Flamingooo? A little tiny girl walks up to me and says, "I have a phone." I say, "Call 911, please." She does and hands me the phone. I do the needful as they say. They dude asks me where I'm calling from and I say "Actually I'm calling from a little girl's phone. She was just passing by." I hang up the phone and wait. There is a little crowd of kids still looking at us. One boy is saying, "He just drunk. He drunk. He hungry. Say 'bacon' and he wake up for sure." I said I thought he was more than drunk. I honestly thought he was a junkie and nodded out.
The kids go home and then a new stream of people come out. They come up and just look at the dude and go back home. The fire engine shows up and they fire people come on out. Including one of those stereotypical 5 foot 11 amazon ladies who looks like she could snap you in half. There must be a class in waking people the fuck up that they take. It was amazing. They're shaking him and pulling him around by his clothes and shoving him and say "Sir! Sir! Wake up, sir! Can you hear me? What's your name? Do you know where you are?" After some very aggressive shoving he finally opens his eyes. Slowly. "What's your name, sir?" "Immmhhnow." "You don't know your name?" "Nah." Can you sit up? Let's get you sat up, sir."
Turns out he's just drunk. Drunk in such an extreme way that I can see how I'm sure my jostling and thumping probably felt like "Oh, That's nice. Thump thump, thump." Also there's a young fireman dude who keeps saying "Thank you." to me. At first it's like "Thank you for calling us." And then I'm not sure so I turn to another fireman and say "Do you need me for anything? Like a report or anything?" And he totally ignores me. Finally after much manipulation of the drunk dude the young guy turns to me and says "Thank you." in a way that is "Thanks, you can go." "No problem." And Betty and I go home.
The sammich was surprisingly bad. The cafe has such good sammiches I'm more than usually let down. I'm Very Sorry about it.
Then Betty starts to scream her head off.
Uuuuuggghhh.
I have a little mental checklist thing I do in situations like that, that I can do without having to touch them. It's something like:
1) Breathing (y/n)
2) Not pukey in a way that suggests breathing may become hard later on (y/n)
3) Normal color (y/n)
4) Not pissing or shitting on self (y/n)
5) Resting in a natural position (y/n)
6) Visible trauma (y/n)
7) Wearing shoes (y/n)
It's not a great list, but if it's mostly "yes", I usually go on about my business.
Once when I was about 6 I passed a bum on a bench in San Francisco with my mom. I was from Eugene, where we didn't really have bums, so I paid more attention to him than a native San Franciscan might have and I told my mom he looked like he was hurt. She thought he looked like he was drunk. We came back later and it turned out he looked like he was dead. Something had gone wrong in his butt and he'd bled to death out his ass, but he was wearing so many layers of clothing that it soaked into the cloth for a long time before it started leaking through the bench onto the sidewalk. It's weird, I have this incredibly graphic memory of seeing the blood and other human-juice all over the bench and the sidewalk where the EMS workers were dealing with him, but I don't remember being particularly traumatized by it except that I'm now more reluctant to touch them than I might otherwise have been.
I wonder if it's a real memory-- or something I got from a book or a movie or something? My real memories usually have more emotional detail.
Posted by: Joshua at April 29, 2006 09:44 AMFor what it is worth - even career dronks don't usually get to the point where you can't rouse them. I was on at least one call where the oh-he's-just-dronk-he-is-here-all-the-time guy was actually trying really hard to 0D on the heroin he'd scored - change of pace or something.
Anyway - and not that either of you need me to mention this - but add to the list rate of respiration. It is a useful - no touch1ng required - way of dronk/heroin filtering.
And dismissing you like that? Pretty common stunt for firefighters - I once saw that engine send someone to a hospital for "neurological damage" following a traff1c acc1dent. Which could be bad, until you got there and noticed that 1) There was no damage to either car - not even a "paint swap", and 2) the 16 year old girl was breath1ng at like, 30 a minute and obviously panicked about the family car. So the tingling in her fingertips? Probably not from damage to her spine.
Not that I had the status to point this out. No - my role was limited to keeping a straight face while the Medic unit - which they had also called out - very patiently explained the physiological effects of hyperventilation.
Of course, this incompetence resulted in ~$1500 dollar medical bill for the family for what was essentially a non-contact acc1dent. So you know - real damage _was_ done.
So I wouldn't worry about the attitude of your gener1c firefighter.
Hello J to the P! I came upon your blog totally by accident! I'm NEW to the blogging world, still in the stage of, "I woner who else likes this movie... 32 year old from Seattle! Wonder if I know her?" YUP. It was Throne of Blood that has lead me to you! I'd love to see Miss Betty sometime... can we set something up?
Posted by: S to the J at May 2, 2006 09:39 AMnot screaming until after the passed-out dronk was left behind is very cat-like. are babies like cats in other fun ways?
Posted by: raej at May 3, 2006 11:23 PMBabies are like cats in that they will never do the cute thing you've seen them do if you are trying to show someone else. They also sound like a yowling cat when they cry.
Posted by: JtotheP at May 4, 2006 09:31 PM