Saving Lives

So this week I did my part as a super citizen and future aerobics instructor and went and got myself CPR certified at the local Red Cross chapter. This event was frightening and enlightening.

First of all, did you know that many people successfully perform CPR from just what they see on TV? On shows like House, ER, and CSI? That's one of the first tidbits the instructor told us at the beginning of the four and a half hour course. If I hadn't have already paid my 42 bucks, I would have raced home and checked my VHS collection for some old Clooney ER episodes and just forgot about spending four and a half hours in a room full or randoms.

When I say randoms I mean myself, one larger bearded lady, two loudmouth personal trainers wearing blue track suits, one guy from Cal-OSHA and a roomful of Armenian, only half English speaking, women getting certified to work in childcare.

For class demonstrations the instructor used the one guy as the victim and the large lady as the rescuer (it was her fifth year renewing the certification). There is just something so uncomfortable about watching strangers touch each other in a non-emergency and non-errotic situation. Yeah, so I'd never be a nurse. I think I had really low blood sugar because I felt, for most of the class, like passing out. It's likely that I would have been saved but, I wasn't so sure at the time.

The Armenian ladies paired up so that one of them would translate to the other while the instructor read over the booklet and played the instructional (and well-acted I must say) videos. They did this throughout the whole class, most of them at full volume. I was worried because the instructor could not have possibly be monitoring if the correct safety information was being translated.

This became very clear when they broke the mannequins out at the end of the class. If I wouldn't have had my own certification looming over my head, I would have performed a citizens arrest on at least three of the women for what they were doing to the mannequins. They were wrapping the mouth guards all over the face and neck and laying on top of the plastic half bodies, all in an effort to perform CPR. The loudmouth know-it-all personal trainer kept going ahead of the instructor and she was screaming to her partner, "30 compressions! 2 Beaths!" It was complete mayhem. I was getting so frustrated for the instructor but it also angered me that she didn't know her own power. She could kick all these people out, they could go home and watch ER and hope that practicing on a teddy bear will give them the skills to save the lives of people they love. INstead she just plowed through the instructions and we all, in our own special way, completed the practical part of the training.

In the end, we all read the written test out loud and got 100% of the answers right. Strong as a group. We all came as different people, but we all left CPR certified.