Post by eagle on Mar 31, 2013 1:48:25 GMT -5
I may have not gotten my daughter convinced and taught, but I sure have my grandkids.... and I have no doubt my oldest granddaughter will carry.
When other women ask me why I carry, I point out a few news stories, and that usually helps. Or just mention I never know what will happen to me on the roads to/from home. I still think the odds are long that I'll ever need to use it, but better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.
Unfortunately... every time I've learned something , or done something, I've ended up "needing" it. Not necessarily for the benefit of myself, but others.
It's like when we 'just' learned the Heimlich maneuver. We then went and ate lunch. Don't laugh ... this really happened RIGHT AFTER we just had the class !!! An older guy with his son eating next to us, started choking.... couldn't talk. Then in trying to cough it up, it lodged and he quit breathing & passed out (unconscious). A waiter tried to do the Heimlich and was doing it wrong. Finally... told him get out of the way.... 3 jerks and a piece of meat went flying about 30 ft like a rocket .... and he was breathing again.
When we learned about putting out car fires, emergency extraction, and trauma treatment, etc..... thought the only place I would EVER use it would be working the races.... NOPE.... we seemed to come up on trucks / cars on fire and extracting someone who couldn't get out, people who over-turned their cars ... and being able to remove them safely without causing them more harm ... from a car with gas draining all over and ... a couple of times actually igniting within seconds of when we got them clear and far enough away.
Oh, heck no , never works that way for me. I finally resolved myself..... that I think God was saying, you need to learn this..... I'm going to have some situations that I want you to be able to handle coming up. Seems I was always in the right place, at the worst time.
But, I can truly say ... for better or worse... there are people who are still walking around alive today that wouldn't be, if hadn't been there right when I was.
Geez.... due to background & long story I won't bore you with .... "the death stare" when someone goes comatose , soon to have their heart, etc. stop .... seen it, don't like it. Just stopped to see a person ... since I was that direction.... found them and recognized immediately what it was... drug overdose (was an attempted suicide.. used to work suicide prevention at one time) and they were barely breathing. Then ... 10 seconds later... go comatose, death stare, heart shallow and breathing shallow... and then both stop. What a day. I'm on the phone with 911.... telling him to "shut up" and just take the information as this is NOT the time for a conversation, as I'm now doing CPR and artificial resuscitation. .... was able to get their heart restarted and them breathing again. Told 911... you better hurry up and get that ambulance here... and even though I repeated the address 10-15 times, they sent it to the WRONG place.
All I'm really saying is this ...... I'ld rather know how to do and never need it, than to be totally unprepared and someone's life, including mine, depend on it. It's no different than knowing CPR, how to put out fires, extract people, emergency trauma treatment, etc. ... we learn them in order to handle the unexpected, and when lives may depend on it.
It's only that what the 'threat' is, is different...