You Have Been Warned

There aren't a lot of things I miss about working the streets as an EMT. There are a few, though.

I miss my old partner. Sure, he had psoriasis all over the back of his neck and on his arms and knuckles and, when his flare-ups were really bad it kind of turned my stomach, and he was cheating on his wife with another employee of our company, and that kind of turned my stomach, too, but he was exceedingly nice to me. And, really, when you're in an ambulance with someone for forty hours a week, that's pretty much what counts.

I miss wearing a uniform and a badge. I remember the first time I ever walked into a Krispy Kreme establishment, ordered a coffee, and had my money refused with a smile and a wave-off from the clerk. "Holy shit," I thought, "now I see how the badge'd class can abuse their power-- it's so damn easy. And sometimes power tastes like coffee with cream and six sugars." I enjoyed the authority and the gravitas that a clean, pressed, professional-looking set of blues with a couple shoulder-patches and a badge can carry. It felt good walking around like you owned a hospital-- who was going to stop you from going anywhere you wanted?

And I'd be peeing on your face and calling it a sex-act if I told you that I didn't miss those red lights and that fucking siren. The first time I ever ran hot I thought I was going to get washed away from the massive swamp-ass I was incurring, and the black, plastic steering wheel was positively soaked with palm sweat by the time we reached the E.R., but, after a while, even I learned to relax a little bit during emergency runs and just... enjoy the ride.

The siren is a powerful tool inside an emergency vehicle. It has the power to instantly turn the brains of motorists in front of you into absolute clam chowder. They mean well, but they don't do the right thing. They slam on their brakes. They veer off to the left. They speed up. They turn in front of you. They freak. And I get it. I've done it. You panic and you want desperately to do the procedurally correct thing, the thing that you learned by reading your Driver's Ed manual on the toilet when you were fifteen years and eleven months old, and you inevitably end up fucking up. The siren warns you that something big and potentially dangerous is happening, right behind you, and you'd better get the hell out of the way.

My wife and I were fortunate enough to be in the car to hear another warning intonation yesterday. We were at the bank, about to deposit a check to stimulate our horny bank account, and a very leathery gentleman entered his Mercedes and put it in reverse. A back-up alarm, sounding very much like a child's bicycle horn, or the horn on Harpo's walking stick, sounded. And what warning did it send out to the masses? That an octogenarian was reversing in a 2009 Mercedes E-Class Sedan, thus creating a threatening situation in which a 3,740 pound mass of German engineering may very well injure you, cripple you, and/or terminate your existence had you the misfortune of perambulating across the Bank of America parking lot at that very moment.

And then it occurred to us: cars piloted by old fuckers ought to have alarms that sound, not just when they're backing up, but all the time.

I mean, sure, you can pretty much bet good cash money on the fact that a 1998 Toyota Camry (gray with gray interior) is being driven by someone whose varicose veins resemble the Tigris and Euphrates rivers on a full-zoom image from Google Earth, but why not just cut through the guess-work, save seconds and potentially save human life by forcing elderly drivers to drive cars that produce a high-pitched wail of warning as they barrel down the boulevard or meander across the double yellow line at seven miles-per-hour. That way, you wouldn't have to waste time looking for the pork pie hat or the teased-up blue hair peeking out from behind the driver's side headrest. You'd just know, because of the OFS (Old Fuck Siren).

The best part about the O.F.S. is that it does so much more than just warn you, the unsuspecting, fully-functional public, that some sag-ass named Milton is headed your way in a 1987 Lincoln Continental, its continual whine would actually remind the elderly sonofabitch that s/he is actually driving. You know how old people are-- they forget things, even whilst they're doing them. Sure, one moment they could be cognizant that they're driving a car, but the very next moment they could be convinced that they're on safari or at a burlesque show. The mind wanders. They get CVAs. The O.F.S. would pierce through their consciousness at all times with the unmistakable message: YOU ARE DRIVING A CAR. FO-CUS.

Because, let's face it: this is America. You can't take away a toothless hick's right to own a gun, you can't make nicotine-addicted blowhole necks stop smoking cigarettes, and you sure as shit can't stop guys from Altoona from fornicating with their sisters, so, in spite of all the research about brain atrophy and delayed motor responses, you're not going to take the keys to the Oldsmobile away from Cloris or Gaylord, so we might as well do all we can do to throw the rest of us a fucking bone, so we don't end up as the hood ornament on some old daddy Caddy.

Who's with me?

Showering with the Coworkers

My wife and I started our new jobs on the same day: September 13th. She went to work at a private charter school. I went to work at a mental hospital. We were both trying to find our way in this tremblingly wicked little world, trying to find jobs that would keep us afloat, keep us engaged, keep us coming back for more, keep us from going mad.

(Yes, people go to work at mental hospitals to keep from going mad. Well, people like me do.)

"I'm just excited to be working with people who have teeth," my wife said. Some of her coworkers at her former place of employ were from, well, different walks of life than she. And that's okay, as long as there's one or two people with whom you can have a decent conversation. As a Jewish vegetarian, I can't really imagine what it must have been like for her during work potlucks, surrounded by the endless parade of ham-salad and french onion green bean casserole.

Mung.

Coworkers are funny. Some people go out to bars with their coworkers. Some people become friends with their coworkers, or lovers, or even life-partners. My eldest sister works for my father. And she spends a fair amount of her workday crying in the bathroom.

'Nuff said.

Whether you hit the bar or the bowling alley with your coworkers, or whether you wouldn't never consider doing either, you spend a relatively significant proportion of time with them-- even if you never see them after your workday ends. Having coworkers that you can connect with is important, some might even say that it is vital. Yes, there are going to be some that you cannot stand, some that you'd rather gnaw your own eyelids off than spend ten minutes with in the same cube-code. There are also going to be some that you'd like to have been elementary school friends with, had you the luxury of shape-shifting and rearranging and DeLoreanizing. Most of them, though, are just kind of there, and wouldn't it be nice to make some sort of human connection with them? Nothing earth-shattering. Nothing involving bodily-fluids or even omlettes, but a moment that says, "Hey, you're human, I'm human, we're both humans who breathe the same air for forty hours every week together. Let's bond over something, for Christ's sake."

My wife works with a guy who drives a Jeep Compass. Because my wife has The Car Gene, she notices things like this and, also because she has The Car Gene, she knows that a Jeep Compass is usually exclusively reserved for women. Especially a Jeep Compass with a Michelle Obama bumper-sticker on it.

"It's probably his wife's car," I surmised, "he must be borrowing it while his Plymouth Gran Fury is in the shop."

But it wasn't so. Week after week, Dude McGee showed up for work at my wife's school in a Jeep Compass with a Michelle Obama bumper-sticker slapped on its ass, Mrs. Apron reported to me.

"Wow," I replied, with typical eloquence, "that's gay."

And, really, it was.

"Hey," I said, "you should send him a link to that "Car & Driver" Rental Car Olympics test-- he'd probably get a kick out of it."

I am referring to a highly enjoyable set of tests the C&D staff put four rental vehicles (Ford Mustang, Lincoln Town Car, Jeep Compass, and some Cadillac piece of shit) through, including Which Car Goes Fastest in Reverse? (Town Car -- 63mph!) and which car does the handbrake parking test best?

It wasn't the Compass. In fact, I don't think the Compass won any of the tests. That's why I knew she needed to send the link to the web version of the article to her coworker. Any man who drives a Jeep Compass (with a Michelle Obama bumper-sticker on it, no less) must have a sense-of-humor about it.

Turns out, he did. Sort of.

"That was really great," he told Mrs. Apron at work yesterday, "but my car did so poorly!"

Um, yeah. You might as well drive the Malibu Barbie Corvette.

"Thing is-- people don't like it because it's a 4-cylinder and has no power. But I drive it like a little old lady and I actually get pretty decent gas mileage."

I hope that by driving it "like a little old lady" doesn't infer that he drives it whilst wearing diabetic compression stockings and orthopedic shoes.

"Thanks for sending me that link," he said, "it was great."

Mrs. Apron was very happy to now have a connection, a fun, lighthearted, gentle ribbing connection with a coworker.

"That's wonderful, buddy," I said, quick to encourage socialization for either of us as a sign that we're not complete retards, "I had a connection like that at work today, too!"

"Cool, buddy!" my wife said. "Tell me about it."

"Well, a couple of the nurses and social workers were in the chart-room talking about peeing in the shower,"

"Of course they were," my wife intoned.

"And then, of course the conversation turned to masturbating in the shower..."

The Confessional

The Catholics get the confessional.

Jews get Yom Kippur.

Bloggers of both and other assorted affiliations get the blog.

Yes, world, welcome to my dirty little secret-smeared hut. Watch where you put your fingers.

I thought it would be fun today, Friday, a day when very few people, for some reason or another, are actually reading blogs, to air some of my filthy laundry and confess some things to the blogosphere.

And, why not? There's nothing a hardcore blogger enjoys more than slicing open his/her wrists and coating the greedy, ogling readers in their shame-juice. We just love letting you get super close to us and then unabashedly vomming all over you in an ardently penitent fashion that you can't help but find utterly charming.

So, I decided that I will confess some dirty, squirmy, vile secrets to you today-- some things I ought to keep to myself, no doubt, but simply can't.

Do I dare?

I do.

----------------

Bless me, Blogosphere, for I have sinned. It's been a while since my last confession, which I guess would have to be this post where I revealed that I took an axe to our basement wall. And now, without further ado, here's the goods:

1.) I often go three or four days in a row without changing trousers.

I know-- I'm disgusting and evil and you probably never want to actually meet me now that you know this revolting fact about me, but it's who I am. I am that guy-- walking around in the same pants he's worn since Tuesday. See, I find it a real chore to unloop my belt, flip it around to the black side, take out my wallet, my cell phone, my Burt's Bees, and any random notes or papers I've written to remind myself about things that I never look at, hang my pants up, go pick out new ones, and then reassemble all the pocket gear every morning.

So I just don't. I do always change underwear, though. Sometimes more than once a day if I found I haven't wiped properly.

2.) Oh, yeah-- sometimes I don't wipe properly. Because I have an anxiety disorder, I'm constantly afraid of a.) missing a phone call, b.) forgetting to do something, c.) being late for an appointment, errand, obligation, d.) some other unknown event rapidly approaching on the horizon that I sometimes rush through the wiping procedure, leaving an undignified reminder. Really, I'm not a bad man. I just have mental disorders, which sometimes become anal ones.

3.) When I use Q-Tips to extract ear wax while sitting on the toilet in my parent's bathroom, I still throw the Q-Tips behind the bathroom radiator, instead of rising from the toilet and taking two steps to throw them in the trashcan. If you want to talk about the power of learned behavior, I've been committing this perverted life error since 1985.

4.) I care about what you think of me. Isn't that fucked up?

5.) After people leave the room I'm in, I always talk shit about them if there's someone else in the room to listen. Always. If there's no one in the room after the person leaves, I think about doing awful, unspeakable things to them with staple-removers and used Q-Tips. I would do it about you, too, because I have no soul.

6.) My office chair smells like farts and dead bison.

7.) I frequently have the need to clear the history of both my home and work computers. The home computer is because of porn, the work computer is because of blogging and frequent ebaymotors abuse.

8.) I don't especially mind being Jewish, but I don't want to look Jewish. When I was fourteen I asked my barber to give me a haircut that would make my hair look like Niles Crane's. He looked at me and said, "I can't do that." Sure, the plastic surgeons can rhinoplasty your fucking Jew conk off, but the goddamn barber can't Aryanize your kinked-ass bushmop.

9.) Speaking of my nose-- several years ago I discovered that, if I squeeze on it hard enough, a substance resembling "Good Spray Cheese" comes out the pores. Hope you're not reading this during breakfast!

10.) I am never quite sure if I'm a good person, or a very, very bad person.

11.) I want my nephew to become at least three because, right now, he bores the shit out of me.

12.) I've told lies to pretty much every person I've ever met, except for my wife.

13.) Even though it makes me sound like a woman, I'm pretty much only ever truly happy when I'm cuddling and/or eating chocolate.

14.) I don't give a fuck who wins the World Series. And, yes, I'm from Philadelphia.