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| Ah yes, but is the CPR trainer endorsed by a washed up TV actor?I have amazingly wise parents. In my almost 24 years of life, they have imparted much wisdom to me on life and living. A chunk of this wisdom concerns the financial issues that I will face as I grow older and become more independent. As I can best summarize it, their advice can be split into two specific categories: frugality (save money whenever and wherever possible) and infomercials (they're only out there to suck you in; don't ever believe the lies; etc.). Well, to their credit, there was also something in there about the importance of finding a job that offers insurance benefits. And I'm pretty sure they gave a few other fringe pieces of advice, but I couldn't really hear them over the volume of the Ron Popeil's "set it and forget it" Rotisserie Oven infomercial I was watching at the time. Gosh, I just love those things. Cooks a whole turkey in the time it takes to watch an episode of M*A*S*H. It comes with a free baster and video recipe book, too! Now that’s impressive.
Anyway, as I am in fact becoming more independent, I had a chance to put some of this parental wisdom into practice. I recently moved into an apartment in Mishawaka and began the arduous and frustrating process of finding a job. My most recent option is to become a substitute teacher. I'm pretty excited about it: it's not a traditional 8-4 same-thing-every-day kind of job, I get to work with kids and teenagers, I can take a day off whenever I need to, it pays well for what it is, and I get to investigate a passion for teaching that has always laid somewhat dormant in my mind. I filled out all the applications (for three school systems, so as to be sure to have a job every day), and I just have one more hoop to jump through: CPR certification. The state of Indiana just recently started to require that substitute teachers be certified, which is a pain but CPR is a good life skill (no pun intended) to know about.
So I just called the American Red Cross about CPR training, which seemed to me the obvious place to receive it. Their first available training session is September 22nd (a long way away for a guy who has rent payments), and it lasts 4 hours and costs $40. Ouch. But I signed up for it anyway, labeling it as a necessary evil.
But then I remembered seeing something about another provider on one of the school applications. His name is "Medic Mike" (a bit more questionable than "The American Red Cross," but the Mishawaka school corporation endorsed him on their form, so I assumed it was legit). I called his number. It was obviously his home number--someone picked up who sounded like a little kid. I asked for Medic Mike (feeling like I was calling a super hero or something).
The kid attempted to muffle the phone and spoke in a questioning tone, "Um...some guy, asking for Medic Mike?"
After a couple seconds of what sounded like Charlie Brown's parents conversing, she returned to our conversation.
"Oh ok, um, he said that he would call you back. He's on the cell phone talking to someone about CPR."
I wasn't sure the nature of the cell phone call--I certainly didn't want to interrupt if it was someone who was frantically calling Medic Mike to receive some kind of emergency CPR walkthrough. So I hurriedly--and probably in a panicked voice--said that it was fine and he could call me back at his earliest convenience. I was ready to give my phone number to the young (and probably illegal, according to child labor laws) secretary, but she beat me to it:
"So, do I just tell him to call the last number that showed up on the caller ID?"
I was a bit startled by the child secretary's lack of professionalism. A polite "uh, yeah, that'd be fine" was all I could get out, all the while thinking, “Harumph. She better not be getting paid very much--I haven't encountered such unprofessionalism since...well, it's hard to think of a time that was much worse. That's probably why someone thought to write child labor laws in the first place: kids just don't know how to run a business.”
So I hung up the phone and thought that maybe I should just settle for the $40 charge and two-week wait--that perhaps Medic Mike was like the desperate infomercial compared to the tried and true corporate establishment of The American Red Cross. But then Medic Mike called me back. It was a surprisingly short span of time between when I hung up the phone with his secretary and when Medic Mike called me back. Perhaps the crisis on the cell phone was a quick fix ("Yeah, you called me too late; that guy is dead, and I don't deal with the dead people on days when I work out of my home office." Or, "Yeah, she definitely needs CPR, but you're not certified to do it. But if you call my secretary Monday through Friday between the hours of 9 and 5, we can set up a training session. As for your current problem, ask around the restaurant and see if anyone else can take care of it. But hey, I need to go return another call."). Either way, the person on the other end of the phone this time was The Medic Mike himself.
And, perhaps against my better judgment, my frugality won the day. Medic Mike gave a great sales pitch: $20 for a 2-hour training session that was to be held tomorrow. Dang. This guy really does have some kind of super power. With my mother's shrewdness firmly implanted, however, I did make it a point to ask if, compared to the Red Cross, a CPR training session that was half the price and half the time might also be half the quality. I briefly imagined walking into a boarded-up “Medic Mike’s CPR and Tattoo Parlor,” where the white walls were stained yellow by chimney residents, to receive "training" that consisted of three simple steps: (1) hit the dying dude a few times slightly above the stomach with the closest available blunt object, (2) while holding the dying dude's nose closed, make out with him or her (without tongue, of course) while breathing normally through your mouth, and (3) repeat those steps until the guy dies, the guy stops dying, or the ambalance (the word would be misspelled in the manual) people come and do their thing.
But Medic Mike assured me that his training was just as good as "those amateurs over at the Red Cross." Well, he didn't say that exactly, but when I asked him why his training was only two hours, compared to the Red Cross' four, he did say that he teaches it better than they do. Wow. This only gets better. I mean, he could have said all that just to pull me in and make a quick $20, but why would he do that? I mean, if he were in it for the money, he would have charged a lot more than $20. That's a great price for such a precious commodity. Plus, he sounded like a really nice guy; I don't think he had any reason to lie to me.
Of course, that's been my sentiment regarding infomercials for years.
But I canceled my Red Cross appointment and opted for Medic Mike to be my CPR trainer. I hope this ends well, with CPR certification and a new ability/confidence to do what needs to be done in the case of an emergency. I do have nightmarish daydreams of how it could turn out to be disastrous, though. Most of the daydreams include one or more of the following: (1) I will curl into the fetal position in the case of an emergency, (2) instead of a working knowledge of CPR, I will walk away from Medic Mike’s with an asthma attack, emphysema, or, worse, a sub par tattoo of a butterfly on my ankle, and/or (3) I get sued a lot because I beat dying kids in the stomach with a baseball bat and then try to kiss them.
Which brings me back to my parents' emphasis on needing to have insurance benefits. You never know when you might all of a sudden start dying in a public place and you need CPR. I mean, who knows how many people out there have been trained by this Medic Mike character? A simple impacted trachea could turn into an impacted trachea, a badly bruised stomach, and a sense of lost innocence. My advice: don't risk it. When it comes down to it, this Medic Mike guy could just as easily be a super villain. | | |
| Henry Nouwen impression #3So you're here again--here in the place of brokenness. It is a familiar place: you have allowed yourself to be put here time and time again, prompted by the message of your utter corruption and of God's imposing grace. It is an awkward place, since your feelings are somewhere between infernal hatred for this place and divine gratefulness for it. It is certainly uncomfortable as you whisper the frail confession that by yourself you are in an utterly helpless state, yet there is somehow a peace in the admission. There is something profoundly right about this place. So stay in this wonderfully terrible place that demands your complete surrender to Him. Submit yourself also to the mercy of those you have wronged--throw yourself at their feet and, no matter what their response, rest in the divine promise that confession is a part of the healing process. And in everything have faith that all these things are heading towards the divine extrapolation point of restoration and reconciliation. You are closer than you know. | | |
| I was a pilgrim in early life
I traveled at night
Bound for Jordan just ten miles north
of a civil war Immersed in mercy in holy flood
That mingled with blood
My sextant headed for homebound lands
Through twilight sands I'm watching my kingdom tumbling down
You're flooding my refuge underground
My kingdom four angels mighty surround
To take me away from here A sea of sand came through fiery pass
A sea of glass
An ivory fortress and turret's steel
Would swift reveal The gods of beast and of sun and sky
With banners high
Were worshipped in their six temple's fold
Of desert gold In summer's sting, as the sages say
The sand gave way
My empire capsized at vanity's cost
And all were lost I'm watching my kingdom crumble and fall
You're building Your kingdom over all
I'm cursing my wisdom while the angels I call
To take me away from here.
"The Kingdom" --- Caedmon's Call
(fortunately, a.k.a. my current theme song)
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| My scruples are crumbling before my eyes...Earlier this year, I crossed into a world into which I never thought I would traverse: I got a cell phone. I had sworn to myself for years that I would never get one, because they have traditionally only been a nuisance to me: they ring or vibrate loudly during prayers, they ring during the most climactic and dramatic parts of movies, they ring and make people feel obligated to cut me off in mid-sentence to answer them, and they just generally make my world a more communicationally dumb place to live. Well, when my brother moved to Africa with his wife in September, he had no need for his cell phone. He asked me if I wanted to just take it (the free-ness of this transaction really attracted me), and I finally agreed, though only after much thought, prayer, and gnashing of teeth. Since that day, I will admit, my cell phone has been a useful tool. I still refuse to use it simply as a social vent--I really dislike talking on landline phones, too; instead, I use it as a tool to get in contact with people whom I don't see on a regular basis, as a tool to set up appointments, simply as an emergency communication tool, etc. And it has been useful for that. But tonight I signed myself to another thing that makes my world a more communicationally dumb place to live: facebook. Up to now, I have staunchly refused to "get a facebook," as the phrase has become popular, but my sister recently convinced me that it could be a good thing, whereas I had always labeled it as only evil all the time (similar to the hearts of sinful men back in Noah's day--see Genesis 6:5). She mentioned a name of a good friend of mine whom I have not seen or heard from in years and that she had recently contacted him through facebook. At that, I was tempted and I gave in after much thought, prayer, and gnashing of teeth. Now, before the populous goes wild at this development, allow me to display the disclaimer that I have posted twice on my facebook profile page: ***A DISCLAIMER: I was very hesitant to "get facebook" (I have waited until my fifth year to do it), because I think it's one of the more pointless and deceivingly communicational things in popular culture. As such, I did not "get it" so that my college classmates (most of whom live 5 steps from me) could communicate with me. I "got facebook" because my sister keeps telling me of the people she keeps finding on here whom she has not seen or heard from for a long time. I've lost contact with a lot of cool people and I guess I'm a generally nostalgia-oriented person, so that was enough to motivate me to fearfully "get facebook." So, to those whom I see on a regular basis: don't be offended if I don't use this as a communication tool with you. I might not post stuff on your wall, I might not respond to you posts on my wall, and I definitely won't respond to the pokes, whatever those are.*** God help me. Who knows what scruples I will surrender now? It's a slippery slope, my friends... (COMING SOON: a multiple entry account of my recent trip to Africa!) | | |
| Woe to me; I am ruined. For I am a man of grammatical ignorance.In my junior year of high school, I had an English teacher named Mr. Dicken. His class was one of the worst experiences of my educational years, and those experiences can be summarized in one of the assignments that he gave me and my fellow students to complete: the perfect paragraph. Each student was to tear a piece of notebook paper in half (hamburger style) and write a paragraph on the half-sheet about anything he or she wished. The paragraph, which consisted of 4-5 sentences, was then turned in to Mr. Dicken, who would somehow coax what looked like large quantities of blood out of the paper with his pen. He would cross out, underline, circle, and draw arrows to and from every conceivable error in the paragraph. Each student, after he or she had regained consciousness, then had to correct every mistake in the paragraph, which was then submitted a second time to the teacher. This process was repeated indefinitely until Mr. Dicken was content to say that the paragraph was "perfect." As a junior in high school, the same era in which a 10-page research paper seemed like Mt. Everest, the assignment might as well have been to keep an egg from frying in Hell. But, while it was the most formidable assignment in the history of the world up until then, it did provide (for all those who took it seriously) an intense understanding of the rules of English grammar, and, when I came to Bethel in the Fall of 2002, I felt like I was light years ahead of the rest of my classmates. (There was, of course, no way for me to prove that feeling as truth, but it felt necessary at the time to assume its accuracy, lest I feel that the "perfect paragraph" was in vain....which would send me into a deep depression.) I have always enjoyed grammar, and I have been told that I have a fairly good grasp of the beast. This semester, though, I have been informed by a few of my friends (who are more knowledgeable than I in the area of grammar) that some of the rules of which I have been dogmatically informed are not actually rules, per se--in the unbreakable sense of the word. I would like to share those annulled rules presently, and I hope that they do not strike the average reader as severely as they struck me. I was very distressed by this new knowledge: 1. It is technically all right to end a sentence with a preposition. While it is still usually considered stylistically inferior, it is grammatically and syntactically allowable. 2. Whereas I have always been taught that, when typing papers, there should always be two spaces following a period, prior to the first capitalized of the next sentence, that is incorrect. The standard, formal rules prescribe only one space after a period. 3. The word "ain't," usually considered to be purely colloquial and informal, can actually be a grammatically correct contraction. .....I'll give you a minute to collect yourselves and clean up any involuntary soiling that might have taken place up to this point. So, if you're anything like me, of the three aforementioned oddities-which-are-actually-normalcies you are begging for the most explanation on the third. Let us consider these three assertion/negative assertion sentences: "He is dumb, isn't he?"
"You are dumb, aren't you?"
"I am dumb, aren't I?" Now let's take the second half of each of those sentences and make three negative assertions about the subjects: flip the order of the pronoun and the contraction, and add the adjective at the end. For the first two sentences, it makes plenty of sense: "He isn't dumb." "You aren't dumb." But what do you do with the first person conjunction? It doesn't make sense to say "I aren't dumb." In this case, believe it or not, it is grammatically correct to say, "I ain't dumb." Unbelievable, you say? Well, I went to the Bethel Bookstore and flipped open a standard English grammar textbook and confirmed it. "I ain't dumb," and no, I didn't just negate that sentence with the words I chose to use. The likes of William Shakespeare and Emily Bronte used "ain't" in their writings, and that not in a colloquial, dialogical fashion. Granted, it is somewhat archaic and still considered informal, and you could avoid the issue by simply saying "I am not dumb" or "I'm not dumb," but the fact of the matter still stands: "ain't" must no longer be avoided like the plague. I need a nap. | | |
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