Help Me

As someone who used to work the streets as an EMT, who spent seventeen months of his life, day in and day out responding to calls for assistance-- you'd think I'd be more accustomed to the concept of asking for help.

I'm not.

Asking for help makes my skin crawl. It makes my ass sweat. It makes my eyes dart around like I'm on drugs. It turns me into an angry, frustrated, defeated bastard.

This morning, my wife and I were to pick up a vintage enamel-top kitchen cabinet to, well, put shit in (because we have lots and lots of shit) and we weren't sure it would *ahem* fit in my wife's Honda Fit.

"I'm going to call my coworker who has a Honda Pilot (a mammoth SUV inside of which we could park three Honda Fits) and ask if she'll drive us to the thrift shop to pick it up."

Cue: exasperated sighs.

Cue: resigned shrug of shoulders.

Cue: downcast eyes and forlorn expression.

What the fuck is my problem?

I don't know.

Sometimes it's about inconveniencing people. Sometimes it's about pride, and fearing that I'll look stupid or incompetent. Sometimes it's about admitting that I can't do something for myself. I would be a very bad quadraplegic.

I'm especially bad at asking for help at work. Ironically, I learned the most about asking for help during the time I was an EMT. When it came time to transport a 400+ pound patient, I was often the first voice on the radio calling for another unit to assist. More than anything else, I learned what it is like to depend on partner. And I found that I liked it.

Sort of.

After leaving EMS and entering office culture, I immediately erected walls around myself. When it came to PowerPoint, I fought my way through it blindly until my wife took me by the hand at home and helped me see the light. Spreadsheets were frustrating and mail merge fuckign label wizards almost drove me off the edge.

I can remember my first real job after college, working at a different non-profit-- I was put in charge of creating a template for a massive data collection project. I agreed to undertake the assignment without having any knowledge of what was expected of me. Two days before the thing was due, I had absolutely nothing to show. Harried, trapped, and at my wits end, I burst into the Program Coordinator's office, shut the door, and had a panic attack.

She was a decent, hard-working, German woman-- 6'1" with a bald spot and a fan of bulky snowflake sweaters and pictures of cats wearing clothes. She saved my ass in a very big way. And I learned that asking for help is not always a bad idea, and that it's probably best to ask for help before you start experiencing difficulty breathing.

In a CPR class I took once, the instructor said that more men die from choking than women because men 1.) think they can get the stuck piece of food out by themselves and 2.) don't want to create a scene.

"If a woman's choking in a restaurant, she'll generally stand up and start flapping her arms or banging on the table. Men, though, a tough ass bastard will stand up and quietly go to the bathroom. And, usually, he'll die there. One time, I was at Red Lobster and I heard coughing at the next table over, and then this guy went real quiet and left the table. I followed him into the bathroom, and the sonofabitch was lying on the floor, totally blue."

"Did you save him?" asked one eager student.

"Fuck no-- he was dead!"

I'm still largely incapable of asking for help when a mail merge is giving me agita, but one thing is for sure, if I'm at Red Lobster and a piece of tail gets stuck in my windpipe, I'll play a fucking Sousa march on my dick to get your attention.

Oh, who the hell am I kidding? I wouldn't be caught dead in a Red Lobster. You know that.