Everybody is born with the six senses: Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and most importantly, common. As time has passed, I've noticed that the last one has been seriously lacking as of late. Maybe it has something with those talk boxes. I'm sure you all have seen it. It usually involves mixing them with... Well anything. Drinking, walking, and driving come to mind first but it can be anything. There was numb nuts that tried to talk on her phone and cook spaghetti. Long story short, she ended up in the back of my rig. But stupid is as stupid does, and morons aren't limited to their interactions with their phones. Case and point: Saturday.

My Saturday began like most. I woke up at 6A.M. I shit, showered, and shaved. I had some leftovers for breakfast and watched some TV. I wish it was ponies but no. It's not yet and even if they were, I'm still in the stable and I plan on keeping it that way. At least for the time being. I got suited up and at 7 I headed to the station. I usually get there early so if I drew the short straw and have to do extra chores, I can get them done before my shift begins. I lucked out, so just watched TV until 8. I checked out the rig and made sure we had everything we needed. I didn't even make it through check out before one of our neighboring districts that uses our radio channels got a call for a crashed semi. One thing I've picked up during my time here: if the little towns are busy, we're boned.

Sure as shit I got one right before lunch. It was a normal bullshit call. A lady said she had trouble breathing and her feet began to swell up. For you and me, that's bad. Very bad. But for an old lady with CHF, that's normal. She took her breathing treatment before we even showed up. If she would have used just a tiny bit of her common sense, she would've realized that those are normal symptoms of her previously diagnosed dual sided CHF. But when you're on Medicare and the taxpayers get the privilege of paying for the $1000 ambulance ride, why bother using your common sense. Don't worry, this isn't the point of my rambling. That's another argument for another day.

When your job security comes from people doing stupid shit, you can't get too worked up over stuff like that. No matter if you work in the big city or out in the sticks, 90% of police/fire/ems calls are bullshit. Yes, I consider traffic tickets bullshit calls. Not that they're not important, just not badass life threatening calls. But what I do get worked up about is when a little bit of common sense could have saved someone from serious injury or death.

We had just got done with training on Safe Haven laws that afternoon when we got toned out. As soon as I heard the tones, I knew it was going to be something good. Why? Because a severe thunderstorm with microbursts had just began to move into my county. The timing was just too good to be a coincidence. What I got worked me up pretty good. A town in my district was having an antique tractor show at the fairgrounds. These storms didn't just pop out of nowhere, they had been predicted all week. But they didn't listen. They held the show as planned, and the storms arrived... as planned. Once the 70+ straight line winds, pouring rain, and lightning showed up they finally decided to cancel it. But it was too late. The winds had knocked down a big ass oak tree... and it landed on five people. Both rigs booked it towards the scene, but driving a box on wheels in what amounts to a weak hurricane isn't so easy. When we finally arrived, fire had got the tree off of everyone and brought them inside. Luckily only one was seriously injured with a broken hip. The others were refusals. Common damn sense would have saved that person from serious injury. But that wasn't it, oh no, go big or go home right?

Later that evening I got another one. An unresponsive woman in the corner of my district. When we show up, we find and old lady laying on the couch having trouble breathing. The family said she was fine until about 9P.M. when she stopped responding. Sounds bad right? Especially when it was now 9:30! It took them a half hour to call 911. I'm giving you 30 secs to wake back up and then I'm calling. We scooped her up and laid her on the stretcher, exposing brownish urine on her blanket. She was in bad shape, and for longer than 30 minutes. When we hooked her up to the monitor, we found the cause. A-fib. Needless to say, we rode hot to the hospital. When we transferred her, the doc knew right away that she it didn't look good. As soon as I left the room, they called for a chaplain. Would common sense have saved her life? Who knows. But the lack of it might have killed her.

We all make mistakes in life. I've made enough to fill a book. But there's a difference between an honest mistake and being a dipshit. When that little voice in the back of your head tells you to think twice about what you're about to do, you should probably listen. You might just save your ass.