EMT-1 THANK YOU VERY MUCH! I've never been that drunk in public!

Anyway, last night was my first REALLY drunken night at a bar. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN! I finished with a 97% on my final written exam (class average was 94%, if you made it this far, you knew your shit). I missed 6 out of 200. THE AFTER CLASS PARTY AT EDDIE'S IN SANTA ROSA, that was sooooooo much fun.

First, just before we leave class with our certs in hand, the Paramedics decided to pull off a GREAT joke, and say that some people, DIDN'T PASS, and to be quiet after everyone else gets their certs, that we'll see if they can pick up some points on test review and pass the class... EVERYONE PASSED, but they scared the SHIT out of 6 poor people LOL

Off to Eddie's... We had shots that the Paramedics bought for students, beers, laughs, and some people started crying on me! I never knew that people there had noticed a DAMN thing I do for them. But they did, and they told me last night.

Danielle is this tiny girl, must be damn near a size 2, maybe 5 foot, 7 to 9 inches tall. She always has a smile on her face, until 2 weeks ago. I asked her about it and told her to smile, and what that did for her I never knew until last night. As think about whether I'm going to get myself a beer or maybe a soda (it would be my 5th drink, 2 shots and 2 beers already =) ), Danielle tells me "You can't go! Have another beer!" I smile and agree. She then starts to tell me about how I totally changed things for her 2 weeks ago. "You, someone I've hardly talked to, knew something was wrong with me. Only 2 people that've known me for YEARS can tell when I'm upset. But as we were doing traction splinting in the lab, you looked at me and said, 'You're always smiling, but you're not today, what's wrong?' It was sort of amazing to me because something WAS wrong but we hardly talked in class so I wondered how you knew. That made me ask friends if I seemed ok, and people said I seemed down. It was totally a turning point because there WAS something wrong, and I needed to fix it. It was so nice to know someone cared about how I felt that didn't even really know me, or that someone noticed me without my knowing, and saw how I felt and tried to help, and I didn't even know them well at all, but they noticed me and payed enough attention that they knew something was off..."

This goes on for 10 minutes. She's telling everyone at the bar how wonderful it was, how much better she felt afterwords, repeated hugs and thank yous for me, how sweet I am and how she asked instructors about me and they said I really knew my shit and that I'm someone she should work with if she needed any help or wanted to know anything. I didn't know that, even the instructors thought I knew what I was doing. "They said you were awesome, I'm not kidding! They said, 'Oh, Michael? Yeah, he's doing great, he knows his stuff...' "I think I wasted 4 months I could've used to get to know her better. She's like my other Danielle, sweet as can be and a friend I TOTALLY want to keep. She wasn't even drunk and she was just being so damn sweet. MADE MY MONTH, it was awesome. Later on as we said goodbye to Jo Ann, she started talking to me again, as if we'd been friends for years, telling me about everything she's up to, and got back to telling me how nice I was LOL. But she started crying this time a little because I told her the simple truth; If I were on the ground, or someone I cared about was hurt, I hope she's one of the EMT's/Paramedics at the scene to take care of them.We talked about heart, what it takes to be a good EMT/Paramedic, how you can't act like a machine but you need to show compassion, etc. What a nice way to end the night.

Jo Ann, she's about 50, I brought her some papers from the Internet class site at her work during my lunch a couple weeks ago since she has no internet access. She told me several times how sweet it was and thanked me a few times. She also said to come by her work and say hello sometime. So nice!

Cassie called me 2 times as well. once to invite me somewhere, damned if I can remember, and once again to see if I could give her a ride home. I left the bar at 1:30am (after I was good to drive, a few hours after stopping my drinking and switching to Diet Cokes) to go pick her up, but she called me off at 1:45am since she found a ride. I was bummed, but it's ok. It was time to go home anyway.

Patty, Case, Kate, Meridith, Cindy, Gina, John, Patrick, Kerry, Medics Freed and Cleaver, and of course Aaron, and god knows who else I'm forgetting since there were 20+ of us all drinking till we had our fill, handshakes and clinking bottles and shot glasses filled the night. I HAVE NEVER HAD SO MUCH FUN OUT WITH FRIENDS AT A BAR! Who knows how many of us will still talk now that we're all done with this phase of training. What a group we were. We had High Average out of all classes, too. I'll post a photo later.