2001-04-13 - 9:12 a.m.

Single People Die First

I'm not really opposed to marriage, it just is something that I've not had any need to seriously consider. (It helps that my longest relationship was back in high school ... and it lasted about 5 months.)

But if you want to live long, being married or engaged seems to entitle a person to certain benefits. I know that it will end in fire (at least according to Kosh), so I can rest assured that people in my office are going to be running around in a panic. It just happens that when I was hired on that I got volunteered to be expendable. In otherwords, they asked me to stay in the burning building and watch the freight elevator.

Darwin would not approve

Why did I get volunteered? Simple, everybody else had a wife, child, or fiancee that needed a pay check. I just have friends.

But why do we need somebody to burn with the building by watching an elevator? Oh, I understand that during a fire or emergency that the elevators may not be safe. I certainly wouldn't turst my life to the steel cables holding those metal boxes if I could jump out a window or body surf down the crowded stairways. In fact, I already have an escape plan. There are some garbage dumpsters that look like they have soft garbage outside some nearby windows. If I can't go down the stairs, I'm jumping!

But it helps to be reminded why I'm asked to die or get burned, so that people who want to use an elevator during emergency won't find out the hard way that it might be a dumb idea. Why can't I just sit around and ask them for their office space while they step right in.

"Hello, oh, you didn't learn to not use an elevator in a fire? That is nice, please say hi to Charles for me. And can I have your nice window space."

Tank Chairs

OK, I'm not bitter about this really. Seriously. Here are the benefits: I get to carry a flashlight around the office. (Yes, I have a flashlight fetish ... ask a certain somebody what I've done with my mid-sized maglite.) *snicker* I also have a customized hard hat and organe vest.

Beyond all this, I actually am very certain that in an emergency that I can be bossy and save lives. I don't trust most other people. The amazing thing is that some of the others of us that are on my building's emergency response team are also very level headed.

Take Redwood. He was an EMT and a boyscout (and not in the vanilla way, but in the independent survialist way that it was supposed to be). Then Bronco, she always has been around when I do something dumbassed and patches me together. Finally Stompy, whom was a martial arts instructor and has tons of supervisor training.

There are some people whom are on the team, whom I'd just as soon escort out in a real crisis. They want to help, but they also kinda ask silly questions. The answer to every question in an emergency is the same: be calm, but make sure as many people as possible survive.

You can't second guess that. And the worst thing is I know that there are situtations where you could have to make some hard decisions. Fortunately the chances of them occuring is slight.

So in order to practice for an up coming building fire drill, I got to push my boss, Stompy, down a flight of stairs! *hehehe* OK, so she got to push me down too.

Folks with disabilities need a way to feel safe in the building, so we bought these chairs with honest tank treads on the bottoms. Basically you strap a person in and then use this air brake to roll them down any surface (including stairs). Bronco, Stompy, and I played / practiced for about 1 hour yesterday.

Bronco is tiny, so she had a hard time moving me down the stairs. Stompy is my sized, so she did fine. I do not look forward to having to move a large person in the tank chair.

Evacuate?

When the call comes to leave the building I'm sure everything will be fine. No, I think it will be interesting. If it is a drill, it certainly will be fun to see how people behave. If it isn't a drill, I'm certainly my goal will be just to get my coworkers the hell out of this building and in one piece.

Jumper

I don't know if I've talked about this before, but a year and a half ago I tried to prevent a kid from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. At the time I was with some out of state friends and we were walking across the Golden Gate Bridge afterhours. We weren't alone.

About midspan I saw a kid who had been vommitting lying on the sidewalk and a notebook. The kid looked about 19 years old, and was struggling to get up. Vommit trailed down his shirt, across the sidewalk, and over the railing to the water below. He was trying to walk back to the railing. That combined with the single black binder (with only one sheet of paper in it), really had me worried.

So I kinda ordered my friends to run to the suicide prevention phone I saw as we were walking, and I decided to stay with the kid. I wanted to be the one to hold him down in case he tried to jump and the one to hold his head if he started to choke.

Not a big deal, but afterwards I felt like in an emergency situation that I can be level headed, if not bossy.

CD Mixes

I'm currently listening to another one of my CD Mixes. It is great having a CD writter at work, as I take my home collection (which is very large) and burn off mix CDs for friends. A few weeks ago I was at a play party and nobody had any music. I wish I had my mixes at the time. I decided I would make copies of several different mixes and keep them in my car. This way if there ever is a party and the need for good music, I can just pop a few mix CDs into the player.

Restraints

The funniest thing about being pushed down several flights of stairs in the tank chair was that the chair has straps. These straps are used to tie down the disabled person. *snicker* The instructor told us that most people don't like to feel helpless and hate the restraints. She told us to only loosely tie people down. Yesterday I asked everybody go ahead and strap me in tight.

If only my co-workers new how much I enjoyed restraints. ;) See, BDSM has its advantages.

-=-

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