No sweat! I aced her! I can now actually go on mentored trips.

The course was pretty interesting, but not mainly because of the content. Stu, the instructor, made the course interesting with bright moments of hilarity. He's ex-military and would walk around the room with a pointer tucked under his arm like a pace stick. For those of you who do not know what a pace stick is, it is a long chunk of wood that a sergeant or warrant would tap on the ground to keep a marching platoon in time. Oh, and in darker times I believe subordinates were hit with it, as well, but you wouldn't find that happening in today's kinder, gentler military. Or, at least, not any reported cases, eh? No, the instructor had many moments to shine with his experience and jokes. Mostly I can't reprint them due to my wanting to keep this an all ages blog.

Towards the end of the class we were coerced into doing scenarios where we had to recover an individual from an H2S filled environment. There were four groups of three, and just as I knew would happen, my group was called first. So this is how it went down with all the steps that we were supposed to perform:

Instructor: MAN DOWN!

EVACUATE - We run to a safe area

ALARM - I shouted, "Alarm!" In reality you would probably shout what had happen or help or something. I was told to shout alarm or beep or fluzuckem. Whatever I felt like.

ASSESS - Like the fool that I am, I took charge! It didn't seem like my cohorts were going to do it, so I did!

PROTECT - At this point you don your breathing apparatus and run them through some tests. I believe there were six of them, and the first two I opened had now air. At least, I thought they didn't. Turns out only one of them was empty. Good thing, though, because if you put on an empty one, and this is for my slow readers, YOU CAN'T BREATH! So as it turns out, not only are there six breathing apparati, but they are all different! This made putting them on very difficult. In fact, at this point we were so clusterred that all three of us forgot two tests we were supposed to quickly run. The low air bell and air bypass. That's okay though. Read on!

RESCUE - I send my two lackeys into the room where our fallen friend is. One advantage to taking charge was the super human ability of not having to wear the breathing apparatus that has seen a million plus bacteria infested mouths in its life time. Cool, eh? So my cohorts carry our unconscious friend out and lie him down in front of me.

REVIVE - I try to wake him, I clear his airway, and I (pretend to) breath two short breaths into his mouth. I'm sure he didn't want any man on man mouth action. I check for a pulse; he's got one, so I continue to breath for him until he pukes. I roll him over into the recovery position, cover him with a blanket, and, forgoing any spooning, I start to reassure him.

MEDICAL AID - I send for medical aid by saying, "Get medical aid!" or, "Call 911!"

Ugh! I felt that were were about as sound as swinging a bag full of alley cats. However, the instructor informed us that we got him out in under 4 minutes and that he's alive and breathing, so all in all it was a good performance.

So, I got a little card saying I've completed it, and now I have every single card I need! Time to play grown up again. Right now it's about 5:30pm, so I'm going to hit the gym, eat, and make sure I'm in bed nice and early. I have to be in the shop around 5am, and that sneaks up on you pretty quick! Ciao for now amigos!