Brain fracture

Well, I took the other half of the CPR course today, which was first aid.

Bad idea.

Not because I don't like thinking about frothy blood-tinged vomit or bone fragments poking through flesh, or because I don't find joy in winding bandages around the limbs of questionable home-daycare workers who are filling their first aid certification requirements, but rather because this particular class had some archetypal classroom issues I had understandably long repressed.

Once a few years have elapsed since you dragged a backpack around a campus, it can be tempting to view one's school years through wistful beer goggles of poor memory and romanticism: it was all learnin' for the sake of learnin', and scribbling in notebooks at the cafe. Except that often, classrooms are dotted with ineffectual teachers and deeply annoying students... sort of like first aid class was today.

You know the types. Let's start with the teacher, a harmless buffoon of a dude, who largely instructed through the overuse of rambling, semi-related anecdotes of the sort that might issue from an overly-talkative guy you don't really know who has cornered you at someone's party. You had this teacher in school, of course. He was definitely a self-proclaimed renaissance kind of man, who wanted to tell you all about his life's exploits just slightly more than he wanted to teach facts, and thus found some sort of ungainly way of harnessing personal tales to the occasional stray piece of relevant information, in this particular case, imparting disorganized first-aid factoids via real-world bar brawl interventions he staged as an EMT. I learned very little other than the fact that your head will fall to the side if you sever your trapezius muscle by falling through a plate of glass, and if an intoxicated fisherman jams a pocket knife into your shoulderblade, you should leave it there for the paramedics to remove.

Strangely, he began the class with an exercise in which we were asked to diagnose the possible cause of a theoretically downed woman in a parking garage, age of 35, suffering from chest pains. The contents of her purse were painstakingly described and listed on the blackboard as supposed clues: a cell phone, a compact, a brush, Lucky strikes. Being that we were a ragtag band of local denizens, none with a medical degree, we unsurprisingly failed to correctly guess the woman was suffering from a birth-control-induced pulmonary embolism. Oddly, no innocent-bystander first aid tips were provided; but we were however and incongruently warned throughout the remainder of the course: "treat what you see, and don't try to diagnose."

And yet, this was not even the worst part of the course, because oh yes, the course included That Woman, you know the one, posessed of no apparent self-awareness whatsoever, eminating a sort of force field of craziness, older, and presuming the entire class to be a personal discussion between herself and the instructor, in which she was gradually attempting to replace him (I'm reminded of this episode of The Office, in which David Brent hijacks a training session to perform his original composition of Freelove Freeway, although of course, that was much, much funnier). Inappropriate Woman's antics included:

• Mocking the teacher for telling an unfunny joke, by laughing like a horse, snorting, and rolling her eyes
• Answering every one of the instructor's frequent rhetorical questions with a mildly ill-timed out-loud response
• Literally screaming SUSAN! at her daughter, also in attendance, who turned up the volume of her cell phone to maximum, and then called the phone, mid-class, as a joke
• Interrupting every EMT adventure story with her own mostly unrelated story about her own far worse and more numerous personal injuries
• Interrupting the instructor's rare forays into actual first aid instructions with her own helpful examples and tips ("I should have been a nurse. I really should have.")
• Picking an argument with a fellow student about whether syrup of ipecac should be given to poisoned children
• Diverting the discussion about offering first aid to diabetics by discussing her own "hypertensive" eating regimen, including hourly doses of cheese, which she showed us in her purse

Lord, as if those were the only examples. There were others. What frightened me most of all is, this woman allegedly is employed as a home day care worker. People willingly leave their defenseless, tiny children in her care, all day long, in exchange for cash.

It was my luck to be paired with this woman and her daughter for the practice bandaging session, in which they cut off the circulation in my left arm, and tied the bandage in a knot which I could not untie.

Let us note for the record that if you happen to go down on my watch, I am not entirely sure I will know how to assist, although a certification card in my wallet might suggest otherwise.