Seems like one of the only manly outposts left in Long Island suburbia is the barber shop, where dads can go by themselves or with their sons and enjoy discussing sports, women and life in general using vocal tones amplified with testosterone. There was actually a priest sitting in the barber’s chair next to mine, sympathizing with my plight as an attorney. You see, the priest had played in his first poker game the night before. After finishing his third hand, the priest concluded that he couldn’t find the morality to bluff his fellow players, and left the game.
As an attorney, it is never acceptable to tell a lie. Painting a picture for the judge and jury using the facts of the case as colors is more akin to what lawyers like myself do. Using the facts is what makes us advocates. Creating falsities is what would get us in trouble. Yet, there seems to be an art in treading the fine line between these two concepts. Take, for instance, palliative phrases I use as a medic with injured patients and their families: “we are going to do everything we can for your daughter”; “we are going to help you the best we can”; “you’re going to feel some pressure while I start this IV”. So next time someone asks you the riddle of what a priest, an attorney and a medic have in common, you can say the answer .
On the other hand, when my seven year old son asked me whether I knew why the chicken crossed the road, I asked back to him, “why?”. I usually tuck my kids into bed before they go to sleep. But on this night, both my son and daughter bravely professed to me that they wanted to go to sleep on their own. We kissed and hugged downstairs, and up the stairs to bed they went while I finished watching the basketball game on TV. Needless to say, after the game, I heard their scurrying, saw their bedroom light go off suddenly, and found my two munchkins giggling (at absolutely nothing!) in their room in bed under the covers . “Get to sleep – NOW!” I admonished them. “We are trying daddy!” I hope they don’t learn to play poker anytime soon.
Surprise! Yet another drug product that doesn’t do what it is advertised to do. Last week, the makers of Airborne settled a false advertising lawsuit for $23.3 million. Before you blame the lawyers and start adding this to your stories in the now infamous McDonald’s burn case category, you should know that the Airborne company had projected sales of $300 million for its most recently concluded fiscal year.
Think about that for a minute… $300 MILLION dollars of sales. That’s a lot of people buying this stuff. Personally, I find it all fascinating: the same forces that cured polio and made progress staving off full-blown AIDS have yet to figure out a way to combat the common cold, but wait… It’s a TEACHER who suddenly cracked the code with a mix of vitamin C and zinc. Lovely.
Not as brilliant, however, as the marketing plan behind this genius product. Airborne even made “Oprah” and “Live With Regis and Kelly.” Airborne then changed its advertising campaign when a plaintiff filed suit against the company in March, 2006. ABC news then disclosed a report that the company’s clinical trials were not conducted by doctors or scientists, but rather they were carried out by two laypeople. Ya can’t make this stuff up.
But because Airborne is classified as a “supplement” rather than a “drug”, it can be sold without first being proven effective. Have fun shopping at GNC everyone. Let me know how that works out for ya.
Post Script: Tamiflu- a Roche prescription drug that has been proven effective at treating the flu, will carry a new warning. The new warning notes that there have been problems related to this drug that have proven FATAL.
The norovirus and I know each other very well now, since it introduced itself to me last Sunday. There I was- writhing in pain on my own bedroom floor from the stomach cramps. No, wait… I was sitting with my face buried in the trash can…. no wait… the sink… no wait…. the bath tub… no wait… the garbage bag…no wait… just vomiting everywhere, and in a 25 foot radius, like a rotating, vomiting sprinkler head.
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t control my bodily functions. My princess cried, while my power ranger tried to calm her. Told my wife to call my brother and sister EMTs to take me to the hospital. Quick response. Had every EMT from my department, and about 20 firefighters in my house. My kids watched. My wife told everyone I was exaggerating. And the norovirus and I snuggled together in the gurney. How embarrassing. How humiliating. I was able to mutter that I wanted my own company within the department to transport. Caught hell for that the next day. Apparently, that request insulted everyone who wasn’t in my company…. gimme a break and HTFU!!! There wasn’t much left inside of me. I was spilling my guts out, but I’m not talking about the obvious. I’m talking about my dignity. I had nothing left of me by the time I reached the hospital.
I didn’t much like being on the bus looking up at my company’s EMTs. I much more prefer being an EMT looking down at my patient.
My princess and my power ranger, well, they love coming to my ‘house’, running around the apparatus floor wearing one of my tar-ridden fireproof turnout gear gloves, shining my flashlight, and even sleigh riding in my helmet when it snows enough. They love taking out a steth and listening to me whisper sweet nothings, and wrapping the BP cuff around each other’s heads. But lately, they don’t like firefighters and medics. They pan their faces when my pager goes off now, for they know there is someone calling for me and the other EMTs- someone with no guts- or worse, someone with a princess or power ranger of their own, watching it all, helplessly, and now memory-scarred.
My power ranger still says he wants to be a firefighter. My little girl still wants to be a ‘princess doctor’. They both know now that walking each of those paths requires more than just fighting fires, or treating sick princesses. This all taught to them by my friend the norovirus. With friends like that, who needs enemies. It’s all chillingly ironic.
This video is dedicated to all the wonderful employees of my law office, and those at the courthouse who had to stay home because they were ‘buried’ under the one inch coating of snow we got the other day, or they ‘had’ to leave early due to the ‘severe’ weather conditions. HTFU!!! Major props to MDOD for the find….
Advanced spiritual people such as Buddha, Christ and their immediate students seem to be always painted with golden haloes around their heads. I don’t know if it’s because some artists can actually see Auras, or whether they want others to think they do. But it appears as far back as time itself. In Australia’s remote West Kimberleys you can even find prehistoric cave paintings, many thousands of years old, depicting people with golden haloes. (By the way, I did spend last weekend visiting museums in New York City with my family and some friends- just in case you’re wondering what the genesis of that factoid is.)
As most of you know, there isn’t a night that goes by that I don’t tuck my kids into bed and put them to sleep. My princess is 3, and my power ranger is 4. It’s somewhat of a challenge every night when I lay in my son’s bed with the lights out. He usually asks me to tell him a bedtime story, and I always start it off with “Once upon a time, far, far away…” But tonight, I decided to tell him about his own past. I told him how ‘when he was a baby’, I lulled him at night to my best rendition of Harry Chapin’s “Cats In The Cradle“. He and I used to call it the “Bum Bum” song- much easier for him to have pronounced. ”Can you sing it to me tonight daddy?” And as I did, and his eyelids slowly shut, I could swear I saw cartoon-like figurines coming out of his
precious little sleepy head- giraffes, fluffy rabbits, puppy dogs, baby elephants, ponies and lollipops.
Harry Chapin died in a freak car accident right here in Jericho, New York on the Long Island Expressway in 1981. Frank B., an old timer firefighter in my department told me that he was one of many who responded to the accident back then. ”I picked up his head from the backseat,” he said very matter of factly, looking hard into my eyes with a straight face. I wonder what Harry’s aura was like. All Frank B. said he saw was “a lot of blood”.
Gotta go and find a mirror now. See if I have one of these aura things around my head. I think it has something to do with my hair loss. There’s gotta be someone I can sue.
A firefighter, responding in his personal vehicle, is seriously injured when he swerves to avoid a truck at an intersection and skids into a city bus…
A volunteer EMS responder is killed in a car crash on his way to the Fire Station for a cardiac call…Perhaps you’ve read about such accidents in an emergency services publication. On the other hand, maybe one of them hit closer to home, and the story made your local newspaper. Either way, the news isn’t good. According to the NFPA, fire department emergency vehicles were involved in an estimated 14,900 collisions in 2001 while responding to, or returning from, incidents. Firefighters’ personal vehicles were involved in 1,325 collisions. Together, they resulted in 1,100 firefighter injuries.
24 firefighters – 17 of whom died in crashes – were killed in 2001 while responding to or returning from alarms: the second most common activity resulting in firefighter fatalities.According to U.S. Fire Administration statistics, nearly 20–25% of accidental deaths in the fire service are related to vehicles, and many, if not most, of these accidents involve intersections. A study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine (December 2002), “Occupational Fatalities in Emergency Medical Services: A Hidden Crisis,” states the leading cause of occupational fatalities for EMS personnel during the study period (1992–1997) was transportation incidents (86/114 fatalities).
Section 375, subsection 41, sub-subsection 4 of the New York State Vehicle and Traffic Law reads as such:
4. Blue light. a. One blue light may be affixed to any motor vehicle
owned by a volunteer member of a fire department or on a motor vehicle
owned by a member of such person’s family residing in the same household
or by a business enterprise in which such person has a proprietary
interest or by which he or she is employed….
That’s right. The good people in Albany, New York say that ONE blue light is allowed. Not two, not blue and white, just ONE, BLUE light. The law hasn’t changed in more than 20 years. Makes me feel like a kid again:
“Oh, please Mr. Lawmaker, gimme just one more light? Pretty please?!”
Well…. I hope you all join me in thanking our thoughtful lawmakers in Albany, and others like them for looking out for guys and gals like me, who may not make it to the next call because of the one light limitation. Thanks for caring. Really. My wife and kids thank you too.
And as for my brothers and sisters, lets be careful out there. I, for one, care about you.
OK. Gotta go put my kids to sleep now. It’s light’s out time. Night night.
When I was a young lad, I used to think Sharon Stone was hot. I’m all grown up now. She’s not hot anymore. She’s ugly with a capital F. And she should learn to keep her mouth shut if she has things to say like her most recent defamation of my country.
