I think I’ve been on record, here and in other places, that I’m genuinely fond of the guys I work with. Mostly. There are, however, exceptions.
Occasionally, they can be jerks.
Case in point…
I got a phone call yesterday from my new Lieutenant, to give me a heads up about a rider we had for the first half of our shift today. This btw is not the jerk part. Quite the opposite, I really appreciated it. The jerk part comes in when he said the other three guys wanted our rider to be a surprise for me.
Allow me to explain.
Today’s guest was a fifteen year-old, home-schooled, kid from Kansas. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no intention of painting with a broad brush anyone who is either A.) home schooled or B.) from Kansas. I don’t doubt there are many fine human beings that have been home schooled and I know Kansas has produced many wonderful people. But this kid? Let me just say if you look up socially awkward in the dictionary I’m pretty sure you’ll see his face. He just seemed to have, oh, let’s call it a naiveté about him. I think that puts it politely.
And I’m nothing if not polite, right? I mean after all, while we were standing by on a gas leak this morning, noting his fair (I mean ridiculously fair) complexion (like, Holy Christ kid, have you ever been out in the sun before?) I told Thurman (that’s not his real name btw, but it just fit him so well that I kept calling him that all day) he should get in the shade so he didn’t get a sunburn.
See? I am one caring, compassionate individual.
Another way to describe him might be to refer you to that cinematic masterpiece “Bad Santa” which, not coincidentally, is how we gave our rider his name. If you know the movie I need not say any more. If you don’t know it, well I’m not going to suggest you make a point to watch it, but if you do watch it, try and visualize Thurman in a firehouse full of smart alecky, Type “A”, alpha males.
Also, despite the festive, holiday sounding name of the movie, don’t let your kids watch it. Just sayin’
Insert wide eyed emoji >here<.
The day was, thankfully, pretty uneventful save for our two hour long gas leak, so we didn’t need to babysit this kid all too much.
And don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against riders. They are almost always (note I said “almost”) a lot of fun to have. Usually it’s a paramedic student or someone otherwise interested in becoming one of us, but sometimes it’s some other friend of the program that genuinely…
Ok, I take that back. Here’s what I have against riders. It’s known as “The Curse of the Riders” and in essence it means that, when we have a rider, we don’t run calls. Until after the rider goes home. Then the wheels fall off. I started this missive last night, after Thurman left. I made it as far as the last paragraph, at which point we went out on a crash, due in no small part to the driver taking a somewhat more than therapeutic level of heroin; followed immediately by two plus hours of stand by at an alleged armed standoff. And the centerpiece on our night came at 4:00 am for an activated alarm at a nursing home. But, when we got back into quarters this morning around 5:30 (finally) the guys from the ambulance had the coffee made and waiting for us already.
So, yeah sometimes these guys are jerks, especially when they try and get the kid to call me Santa.
But the simple, little, act of having coffee ready for us when we got back goes a long way towards buying…
Peace