November 13, 2009

Brokeneck Baby....

So today I got to spend 7 1/4 hours in various trainings for my place of employment. I put trainings right on the same level as meetings.... horrid. A few interesting things did come out of it, though.

The CORE trainer for the CDL classes is a former bus driver of mine. She was telling about her experiences driving a route in the MRSD fondly known as the "route from hell", and I asked, "Hey, was that my route?"

"Route 11?" she asked.

I nodded. "Sawtell Road?"

"Yep," she said. And as we discussed the years in which she drove the route, which corresponded roughly to my sixth and seventh grade years, I realized I did in fact remember her, but she looked much younger in my memory. Which I suppose is understandable, since it was 16 years ago. I probably looked younger then too. I told her, "This is how you would remember me." I then proceeded to put my headphones on, cover my head with my hood, and hunch down in my seat, making myself appear to be nothing more than a black blob. I told her I usually would sit as close to the front as possible. She said she didn't remember me. I told her that was the idea. I vividly remember trying very hard to be invisible on that bus. It's good to know it worked at least some of the time.

Later in the afternoon I got to go to a first aid class, which was pretty much exactly the same as every other first aid class I've taken except for two things: The trainer and the Brokeneck Baby.

The trainer was a man who in this blog I shall call Busdriver Bob. Busdriver Bob has a mullet. But not just any mullet, mind you. His is business in front and a drunken party in back. What I mean by that is that the back is long and pulled back into a ponytail, except for this little halo circle of hair around the base of the ponytail that is short and curly. I'm not sure what look he was going for, but he missed. By a lot.

And then there was the Brokeneck Baby. Since there were eight students in class today, we were divided into four pairs and each pair was given an "adult" CPR dummy and a "baby" CPR dummy. I was paired with Robyn, and Robyn and I got the Brokeneck Baby. All the CPR dummies have the heads that you can tilt back and lift the chin so as to practice opening the airway. Our baby, however, had a head that lolled oddly to the side and had a black piece of metal sticking out through its rubbery flesh. It also had a bit of black metal sticking out of the side of its left leg, but that was covered up by the little red pair of shorts it wore and not nearly as disturbing as the broken neck. Robyn and I tried valiantly, but we decided that the Brokeneck Baby could not be revived. The adult dummy, however, went on to make a full recovery and will no doubt be used in other classes in the future.

Oh, and the other fun thing about the baby dummy was that we got to tear its face off. Because each of us had our own personal, sterilized rubber face to put on the baby dummy. First you had to shove the plastic "lung" back in its skull cavity through the little hole, then you had to fit the "face" on top of it, and then practice breathing while covering both the mouth and nostrils and no doubt if this were not a drill you'd be getting baby boogers in your mouth. 'Cause babies gots mucho boogers... even the unresponsive, non-breathing ones. The adult dummies just had a nose and mouth that came off and the rest of the face was hard molded plastic.

Speaking of which, one of the dummies revenged me... no doubt for cracking its sternum during the chest compressions. But we were supposed to be practicing the Heimlich, which was difficult since the dummies weren't made for that and were actually quite solidly plastic about the abdomen. While I was holding the dummy close and trying to save it from choking my jamming my fist into its diaphragm, it got its vengeance by flipping its heavy plastic head back (remember the open airway thing?) and clocking me right on the bridge of the nose. I may actually have a black eye tomorrow... it was a pretty solid hit. Still a little tender. Nobody noticed that event, though, and I didn't say anything.

Last detail - it was flippin' cold in that room. The thermostat was set at 66 and it was locked, so we got to freeze in there for 3 1/4 hours.

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