CPR, Driving, Buy Fur Save the Environment????
I went to my recertification for CPR last night and it was way out in the suburbs. It was actually only 20 miles from my place but that meant $1.60 in tolls each way and also 20 miles around rush hour in these parts means stuck in traffic for about an hour and a half wondering why more people don’t have entertaining bumper stickers and why there’s some weird billboard above you giving out a number to take care of a…let me get this straight….goose/geese problem? I didn’t know Chicago had one but must be surrounding areas do. What’s wrong with a little goose hanging by your home? Silly!
Okay more about driving later. This is one big long ramble that might not end until I collapse from exhaustion (and possibly need a couple of rescue breaths!). Yeah so in the past couple of years or so the American Heart Association has changed a few things and the best thing they changed is that now they instruct people to give chest compressions for CPR at a location between the person’s nipples. That’s good because I think before whenever the instructor would say, “Xiphoid process” half of the people in the room would immediately have that glazed over look. And also, people can remember between the nipples in a state of panic a great deal easier. I really don’t want to be dying my slow death, minutes creeping by as the brain cells die (and hurry because I need those, really!) with some well meaning dolt going, “I really want to help her but I just don’t want to crush her xiphoid process. What was that rule again? How far up from the xiphoid process? Someone call 911! Oh wait she’s dead already.” Don’t think that hasn’t happened.
And speaking of which, the other thing that really struck me about the CPR course was how the instructor was going on about people not wanting to perform CPR on others because (amongst other things) they are afraid of the liability. Have we really gotten this far away from good ethics when we don’t want to risk saving someone’s life because afterwards they might….sue us??? Come again? Also, diseases…okay I have one of those one way valve plastic masks but it’s buried at the bottom of my trunk so if someone stops breathing and doesn’t have a pulse next to me, I’m not going to run to my trunk to dig it out and get it because, by the time I get back, there’s no chance the woman, man, or child will still be alive. And that thing is a bit too hefty for a key chain (they do have these little disposable plastic baggy ones) I think I’ll just take the “risk.” The risk of contracting something is quite low anyways, really. Can we worry about something else far more disconcerting instead, people? Here, I’ll give you a topic-the fact that the US spends far more on weaponry and war/occupation (same thing, no?) than education. As Mike Myers would say “Talk amongst yourselves.”
But wait! I really wanted to ramble some more about driving. Okay so when you live in a city and are used to driving on city streets, you also adjust to a certain sort of speed as safe and comfortable. 40 in the middle of the night when there’s two lanes on each side if it’s 1 or 2am and no one’s out is max. Well, I was driving 65 on the way home when there wasn’t hardly any traffic on the kenendy and I felt like I might be passing planes landing into O’ Hare. And also, okay so poor Beulah’s a bit beat up and she doesn’t have proper things that good autos should like an inside light so that one can count her toll change properly. This usually isn’t a problem but it was last night. I had eighty cents in each hand clutched tightly around the steering wheel for the two tolls. Too bad I had to open my hands to hold up my directions against the lights guarding the highway…
Also, what is with these toll booth lane mergings…there was a sign that said, “Follow the lines of your lane” some sort of wierd existentialist Matisse markings they were. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Everyone and thing was just going way too fast and coming out of nowhere. I had Bowie singing “I’m Deranged” in the back of my mind from the Lost Highway soundtrack.
Okay so another thing about in city driving that I’ve noticed that is different in Chicago from other cities is the three car (or two cars and a CTA bus) rule when you’re turning left on a yellow. Plus, sometimes streets just randomly end (poof! were you just on this street?) and you actually have to turn onto a separate street to get back on them. Also, three way intersections galore and you can NEVER turn left when you want to. But what’s nice is driving east/west on lawrence and foster you pass by a dozen different kinds of ethnic neighborhoods. I’m gonna bring up this weird sign now that has been bugging me for the last few years.
It’s actually sort of a billboard mural deal on the underpass around ravenswood on foster. It says, “Save the Environment. Buy Furs!” Did I miss something? Can someone please explain how that would be saving the environment? I’ve racked my brain for four years now. I mean, the closest thing I can manage to logic is maybe less chemicals in the production of furs vs. synthetic materials? Is that what they are talking about? But there’s still chemicals and energy used with the processing in most fur making plants…right? And oh the inhumanity! Yeah let’s kill everything and save the environment. Great idea. Next, we can drop another atomic bomb to stop global warming? I’m so confused.
Anyways…I support taking the el and public transportation but for everything else…there’s Beulah.
