Another Day, Another $60

Today, as promised, we continued our first aid training, all 10 hours of it. I had no idea people could talk so much about checking for breathing, pulse, and responsiveness; placing bandages and splints; stopping bleeding; treating shock; and any number of other things that escape my mind right now. Every-so-often we would get up, go outside, put on the gear, and do a practical demonstration for the instructors. At least that got us out of our seats.



There's a thing in the military that we call "death by powerpoint." Powerpoint is a program developed by Microsoft that allows you to put together a "slideshow" presentation. Usually, in a military briefing, someone puts together a bunch of slides with writing on them and clicks them off one by one as they elaborate on whatever subject they're teaching. I think this is so they don't have to tell you everything. They can just tell you some of the things and you're supposed to read the rest off the slides. It makes for a pretty boring time. That's why we call it "death by powerpoint." That's almost what we had today.

There were two things that saved the day: the practical exercises, I mentioned above, and a field exercise we did at the end of class. It was a simulated "under fire" exercise where I got to play someone who's injured in a vehicle. My two buddies ran over, while under fire, and dragged me out of the vehicle (literally) and had to "take me to safety and assess my condition and wounds." It was pretty fun. More than being fun, it's the kind of thing that's important to know.

I complain some, but all-in-all I'm glad to have this kind of training for when I finally deploy.


I'm about toast right now,
Eric