Forty Years Behind the Mask

At the tender age of nineteen I learned how to be a combat medic. Two years later I was out of the army and on my own in the big civilian world, with a great skill set. I could treat gunshot, grenade, and bayonet wounds with great skill. However, in the early seventies there was very little call for this in the everyday civilian world, so jobs were scarce to say the least. So in 1974 I joined the United States Air Force to learn a skill that I could use in the civilian world.Over the...
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At the tender age of nineteen I learned how to be a combat medic. Two years later I was out of the army and on my own in the big civilian world, with a great skill set. I could treat gunshot, grenade, and bayonet wounds with great skill. However, in the early seventies there was very little call for this in the everyday civilian world, so jobs were scarce to say the least. So in 1974 I joined the United States Air Force to learn a skill that I could use in the civilian world.Over the last forty-four years working in huge facilities and one operating room hospitals, I have seen more human folly and surgical slapstick then I could ever recount. In my world of surgery there are fools, jokers, clowns, and pompous asses. They come in all shapes, sizes, genders, and ethnic backgrounds. Some spoke English masterfully, others not so much. I met masters of their trade and bumbling fools somehow passed medical school. But despite their differences, one thing above all else remains the same about those I have worked with - people are hilarious.