Monday 20 March 2017

Yoots

Before anyone starts attacking me, yes I know it could be spelled "yutes" or "utes", but according to the official script, it is "yoots", so I went with Yoots.  Just like the original patent for toilet paper shows it going over the roll, I consider that orientation to be correct.  And if you have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, go watch "My Cousin Vinny".  Right now.  Go.  Do it.  And do not come back until Vinny and Mona Lisa are driving back to New York.

You're back?  Good.

I've often said that youth is wasted on the young, but then again so did George Bernard Shaw well before I first did (although his exact quote was “Youth is the most beautiful thing in this world—and what a pity that it has to be wasted on children!”).  In fact, I just told my children exactly that just a few days ago (the short version) when they were complaining about some movie not streaming fast enough.  At the time I decided not to delve into what it was like in the time before movie rentals when you just had to watch what as on TV, and then years later what it was like driving to a store to rent a movie, hoping they had the one you wanted, driving back to the store to return it, and paying late fees and fees for not rewinding (aka "The Good Old Days").  So instead I started boringly lecturing them on why they should be outside enjoying the weather, playing, frolicking, gamboling, and cavorting or whatever, rather than staring at a screen (which, ironically, is exactly what you are doing right now and also what I just instructed you to do). 

Regardless, kids should be outside playing, not inside playing, as long as they are reasonably safe about it.  But during their development most kids eventually go from "I'm not sure I can do this" to "I AM INDESTRUCTIBLE!  I CAN DO ANYTHING!  WHEEEEEEEEEE!"  It's the childhood equivalent of "Hey I saw some guy do this in a movie once.  Here, hold my beer".  At this crucial point in their development children lose the ability to judge their own 1) abilities, 2) carelessness, and 3) bravado.

And Travis (not his real name™) is a perfect example of all three.

The first thing that told me that Travis was a completely normal teenager was that he was actively texting as he rolled through the door of my trauma bay.  That prompted my first eye roll of the encounter.

"Hi everyone, this is Travis."  He barely had the decency to look up at the sound of his name as the medics gave their report, but he at least grunted, eyes (and thumbs) still glued to his mobile phone.  That prompted eye roll #2.  "Travis was riding his dirt bike, no helmet, and he lost control, and he fell onto his left side.  He was going about 60 kph (35 mph) when he crashed."

The second thing that told me that he was a normal teenager (and that caused eye roll #3) was his response to that bit of information:

"NO WAY WAS I GOING 60!  NO WAY, DUDE!  I WAS GOING AT LEAST 80!"

I think all the people in the trauma bay, myself included, groaned audibly in addition to rolling our eyes.  Clearly, everything this guy was going to say was bullshit.

Travis then flashed the universal sign for "METAL", grinned, stuck out his tongue, and went right back to texting.  Once again, he wasn't even able to muster up the decency to look at us or speak to us.

I can imagine his text was something lucid, intelligent, and well-thought-out, like this:

Travis seemed completely uninterested and unimpressed by the fact that his left leg had an extra bend in the thigh where it did not belong.  He continued grinning intermittently and making strange grunting noises under his breath as we finished our workup (still texting furiously), which demonstrated only an isolated left femur fracture.  The only thing I could think as I looked at his X-ray was, "I guess the fucking thing is broken."

Fortunately Travis' stay was short and uneventful, so I was not treated to very much of his teenage antics.  I heard about him flirting with several of the nurses, but they were just as unimpressed as I was.  And while he was with us his mother told me of several other not-quite-as-severe crashes he had recently had on his motorbike. 

Once it was time for Travis to leave, I knew I had one more job to do: make sure this didn't happen again.  I had already told him in the trauma bay and the following day that he was lucky he hadn't sustained a serious head injury yet, and he had to wear a helmet whenever riding a dirt bike.  But I decided to drill it into his fortunately thick skull one more time.  With his mother in the room, I told them both that if Travis was going to continue riding his death machine, he at least had to protect his head.  Travis looked at me as if hearing this strange information for the first time, his expression clearly saying this:

Yes. I was serious about that.

21 comments:

  1. Just under the text you have, "Travis seemed completely uninterested and unimpressed by the fact that his left leg an an extra bend". First "an" should be "had" I believe :)

    This kid sounds like my Neice :( growing up I had my head in the clouds, now all the kids have their heads in their phones.

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  2. last time I rode a two-wheeled machine in a public place at a speed higher than a walk (maybe a brisk walk) without a helmet and gloves, I came back with partial thickness abrasions from the center of my forehead to the top of my neck (yes, this includes my ear) and full thickness abrasions to the heels of both hands.

    according to my last look at my bike speedometer, I was going just slightly faster than Travis when the guy began his turn before signaling.

    30 years later, my knees still click when I've been on my feet too long. I'm afraid the YOLO generation will be disabled before I will, and I'll have to keep working to fund THEIR social security.

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  3. As a teenager (as few years ago that was) believe it or not i didnt do anything so explicitly dangerous, yet still managed to have several sprains in highschool. And prior to highschool all the way back to when i was THREE, made many trips to the emergency room. Clearly the ground is my enemy and liked to beat me up, as thats usually how those trips started, save 2 cases I wont bore you all with.
    Connor

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  4. Should make them go to a tow-yard for some faces of death B.S.. My drivers have traumatized me, and that's not an easy thing to do.. Hey Cali look at those pictures in that call, hey Cali sending you a picture, hey Cali -oh Jesus Christ I know better than to answer them on the radio when they are on a horrible motorcycle police call..
    Head & Brains in a half helmet, brains smeared across the street- no helmet, puddles of blood- no helmet, guy drapped over the truck windshield.. I am a firm believer if they see it, I should bare witness as well, I sent them after all.. The blood puddle I about lost it, I thought it was a puddle of transmission fluid, but couldn't figure out how a bike lost that much fluid.. My driver kindly said, "that's a puddle of blood dumbass", queue wretching..

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    1. you might mention that any pictures taken of an incident scene may be seized as evidence, if the police decide they need them. that might reduce the influx a bit. we also have HIPPA considerations, which essentially have made it an SOG that no pictures are taken of incidents, unless specifically directed to collect educational material for the department. maybe you should get all your drivers EMR training so they are subject to HIPPA as well.

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    2. Sorry long post Ken.

      It's for our police records, we have had to turn over pictures to prosecutors before. The pictures can not be posted or shared nor can they stay on personal phones. They are automatically loaded in to our database for each individual call that generates the invoice. We are subject to being arrested and or fined because we all hold city ID numbers and releases and confidentiality agreements.. If you do not have city numbers you are not allowed to access the police calls and or look at any information pertaining to the police call, and if you don't have city numbers you can not take or dispatch a police call.. I had to go through three state background checks and fingerprints for seven police contracts I dispatch for..

      And when we take our pictures we sometimes get the gooey stuff..
      This was not one of my calls or even our company call, but the call made the news, I'm going to tell you a bit about..
      Young suicidal? woman was doing 100 going Eastbound in the Westbound lane (wrong way on a very busy highway), police were called and they were 2 exits up the highway laying stop sticks before she killed herself or anyone else.. Too late she went head first in to a car and a jersey barrier.. The impacted disintegrated her vehicle and herself..
      Took the medical examiner a few hours to get what they could of her out of this car and had to call it, they left bits and pieces of her and they call it "vehicle property" at that point, it goes back to the yard with the vehicle and the family or insurance gets to deal with that mess, we don't clean the cars.

      Another company story, they do police calls in the area of parking garages (favorite of jumpers for some reason), person jumped and landed on car, the person head cracked open and the brains burst every where (apparently they stink), the medical examiner and fire fighters got what they could and the tow truck driver asked the fire fighters to hose the car, they said no because it's hazardous material, there was a lot of brain matter all over the sunk in roof, the tow truck operator said, well wtf- there is still globs all over, firefighters told him it would come off as he drove it to the lot it was now "vehicle property".
      I use to pick a driver up at that lot after work and the horrid thing was it was behind the cyclone fence, I could see the car and blood streaks running down the sides of it and pooled in the roof..

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    3. Our pictures are used to back up police, to keep our liabilities down, drunk driver accused us of flipping their car after they flipped it, pictures proved when we got on scene the car was upside down, police had pictures but dumbass was trying to score a new car off us.. Our pictures and police pictures proved a huge point to him..

      Holiday one year, we have a little fatality stretch of road on the east side, I pick up 2-4 fatalities on this little itty bitty road a year.. We get one, the body was still on scene, the police asked for my driver to step over body uncovered to recover the vehicle because a person was still in it down an embankment. He had to step around this person repeatedly to set his winch and reset them. Driver had to snap pictures on the spot but thankfully the body was behind his feet, but most the guys keep it PC, however if the crown of the head is in the helmet and is on the seat because they just found it, pictures get snapped..

      My first fatality made the news, stolen motorcycles, one dumped the bike and the other ditched the bike, we got called out to the scene and while we were clearing it of the bikes the sergeant yells out we have a body, the "kid" lost control and dumped the bike and slid the opposite direction of the bike head first in to a tree and bounced off in to some bushes and was fairly well hid.. They only reason they found him was a quick search to make sure "other kid" wasn't hiding in the bushes once they realized fully what was going on after contacting the registered owner of the two bikes..
      So we had to halt while EMS worked on him for a minute and then say nope way too late after clearing and cleaning the scene for an hour and then finding him, and we had to wait for measurements and the ME to come get him, all the while he was visible..
      Trust me I use these stories to remind my kids seatbelts and seatbelts, WEAR YOUR SEATBELT AT ALL MFING TIMES!! And full closed faced covering your full jaw helmets, not skull caps, skull caps are named that for a reason..
      If the city said have at it for a scared straight program for texters, and Docs teenage dumbass, and all the others I would totally grind that shit in to their heads.. But you gotta want to listen to hear.. These kids don't care and so won't take shit from things like that.. My kids fear the wrath of mom if they don't wear their seatbelts.

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    4. we do washdowns at the coast. we won't scrub everything off, but we'll get the chunks cleaned off. that's just polite.

      (and if it's hazmat on the car, it's hazmat spraying off the car while it's going down the road)

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    5. Ken I said the same thing as my jaw was dangling.. Wash it off here or drops off the car there.. Now you officially never know what you bring in on your shoes..

      Oh did you hear about the accident I think it was 101.. Head on and they lost a body, the towing agency that was on scene called us to help cover some load for their in town folks, their trucks were on standby at to coast because they lost a body from the accident.. This was back in the fall.. ME wouldn't let anyone leave scene til it was found, I think it might have been the person's head.. Everyone searched for the body or head for hours that night..

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    6. I don't recall hearing that particular war story, so I'm guessing it was one or two counties north of us. our last high profile one was when a relative of a prominent politician was involved. I was on parade duty that day so I didn't get to go play.

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  5. Wouldn't be surprised if besides his still developing teenage brain, Travis has some brain injury from previous concussions. I'm sure he's had some previous "adventures" with his bike, and as long as nothing looked broken or was bleeding...

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  6. what if I didn't, and do not intend to watch this movie?

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    1. Then you are no longer welcome on this website. Please vacate the internet residence.

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  7. I truly meant Connor.. Are you the same Connor the Doc worked for eons to make you make an account..

    Connor- "I'm illiterate so I don't watch movies".. And I go ahdh when I try to watch movies, it's miserable for me..

    But I have a funny one about my above quote..
    I tell my boss all kinds of bullshit all the time when he tries to make me read self-help books (counselor for 15 years, don't need his damn books), so I tell him in my most dramatic voice, "I CAN'T READ".. He doesn't laugh..

    He handed me another self-help book and I told him, "BUT, I'M AN ATHEIST".. Still didn't find me funny..

    He walked around handing everyone this weeks new self-help book and passed me, so I follow him out to the front desk and say dramatically, "Did you give up on me, because, I CAN'T READ"..
    He hasn't spoken to me in nearly 6 months, not sure if that's good when the CFO completely ignores me and calls me the drama queen

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    1. Yes that would be me. It wasnt an issue of creating an account it was an issue of blogger letting me log in. It would never register the fact that I had logged in no matter what I tried. And a previous comment with connor notyerbidness is from my secondary email (i forgot which one i typically logged in with since I only just got it to log on with other devices than my phone

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    2. Lol Doc should send you a certificate or participation trophy for finally doing it.. I read all of his old blogs and I watch the metamorphosis of him "yelling" (for lack of better word) at you and it gradually got funner..
      It took me months of reading, but it's interesting interacting with all the people that have been here for ages.. :)

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    3. I got here just under a year into the Jahi McMath saga. kind of spooky realizing that was about two years ago.

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    4. I personally started reading around the time he posted a story about an old women who had (i forget the official term) the "flesh eating virus" on her leg, about 4 years ago I think.

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  8. I had to go look up online what yoots are.
    Was Travis taking selfies of himself in the trauma bay?

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