There is no better day for this post

Before I begin, I have to say that the House's health care vote could hardly have made me happier. Having spent a large portion of childhood and adolescence on the wrong side of hard-to-insure, and having parents who've been self-employed in some capacity for the majority of their working lives, I've taken great umbrage throughout the debate at the idea that lack of health care is only an issue for the lazy and for mythical welfare queens (haven't we been done with that stereotype since like 1994?). Finally. While I know the new plan isn't perfect (what is?), the acknowledgment that 1) the protection of the people should be a primary role of government and 2) hardworking people can still be screwed over by the insurance system gives me the happiest grin this side of a icanhascheezburger. And believe me, I love a lolcat.

Now. I spent yesterday completing a major badge requirement for first aid. See? See? The promise of cheaper, more accessible health care is not making me abandon my commitment to being able to actually respond to a medical emergency. So there. (Sorry. I shouldn't check in with comments at the NY Times website while writing this.) Anyhow. As I was saying. I spent yesterday obtaining my Red Cross first aid certification.

In general, I was surprised with the brevity of the training program, though of course something is better than nothing. The real problem for me, at the training, is that I'm a wimp. I had a hard time looking at the images of amputations, objects embedded in eyeballs, that kind of thing, in the training manuals. For me, all this is straight-up nightmare fuel, though of course there's the (valid) argument that it's better to experience seeing pictures of it before I find myself walking down the street and coming upon someone whose internal organs have become external. (Despite Good Samaritan laws, I'm still not sure if I'd be able to handle that. Honestly, though, could you?) I know that this isn't a big deal for a lot of people -- at least, popular movies (of the sort I don't watch) would suggest it isn't. But still, I had a real problem with it.

There were thirteen of us in the class, and Antoine, our chipper instructor, walked us through bandaging each others' arms and legs with the least possible thought of actual gore. We spent a large portion of the morning improvising splints and making slings out of strips of gauze which, despite the certain Civil War field hospital air to it, I really enjoyed and was actually quite good at. (Witness John's bandaged arm for the show-and-tell portion of our program. They -- justifiably -- wouldn't let me take pictures at the actual training. Please note, I did not actually injure John's arm in order to wrap this bandage. I'm willing to sacrifice a certain amount of verisimilitude.)

My partner, an older gentleman taking the class in order to become a Red Cross instructor, supplied a counterpoint to Antoine's good nature. He'd done all the classes before, but he had no interest in any amount of sugar-coating. When the first-aid handbook suggested calling for EMT services, each time he'd lean over and ask me "what if we have a 9-11 situation and the infrastructure collapses?" I didn't have an answer. For a minute, I thought he was just paranoid. On the way home on the train, though, a tourist couple asked for directions to the World Trade Center site. Maybe he had a point.

One final thought, and this has more to do with my adjustment to New York than with anything actually first aid based. I'm interested, more and more, with the notion of "the country" here. I still get confused when I hear "the country" applied to places like Long Island, northern New Jersey, and all of Westchester, and a woman in my class made me think about this time and again. She explained that she was taking the class because she has a country house and, when she's there, she's scared to be so far from the hospital. How far, someone asked? Fifteen minutes by car.

I'll leave you with that one.