Still There

I was looking around for more information on the OPD officers, when I found this on the OFD homepage.  I was touched that they hadn't taken me down.  Probably because no one can recognize it, but it's still nice at a time like this to feel like I belong to something.

Rest in Peace, Dan

It's hard to lose a family member.  It's sad to lose a friend.  It's sobering to lose an acquaintance.  What do you call it when you lose a fellow sworn public servant?  What if the fellow public servant used to also be a friend?  What if he was a friend and former co-worker and was murdered in the line of duty?

I knew Dan Sakai when we went to college together.  We worked at the UCPD where he taught me the ropes.  We were pretty good friends for a time, then he moved to Japan to teach English while I moved to LA to become a paramedic.  We were both the EMTs of our group at work, but he eventually continued the law enforcement path and I took the fire route.  In reading the recent news about him, I realized we were both hired by the City of Oakland in December 2000, he at OPD and I at OFD.  We popped up in each others' lives every so often, sometimes on scene at an incident in Oakland, sometimes outside of work.  I last ran into him a few days before I left the OFD.  Our engine and a few patrol units happened to converge on a Starbucks for some emergency caffeine.  We caught up a bit, his wished me luck in med school, and I wished him luck at OPD.  A couple months ago, I texted him out of the blue when I was in Big Bear, because I remembered he was from there.  Of course he asked me how med school was going and such, I told him to stay safe, and that text exchange was the last.

What is it about emergency services?  Is it having served in a dangerous place like Oakland together?  Is this what military people feel when they hear about a downed soldier?  What was it that I felt after 9/11 when 343 firefighters I'd never met died 3000 miles away?  It must be a bond of some sort, although I have a hard time describing it.  It must last even after one leaves their agency, because I still feel sad even though I'm not at OFD anymore.  When they swear you in, you take an oath to serve and protect.  But of course that means you swear to your crew and co-workers, too.  And when you leave, they don't swear you out.

Still, I am mostly sad because although we grew apart in recent years, he used to be a good friend and mentor.  It must be a combination of sadness for a friend and regret for someone who worked the same streets I did, because I wonder if I would feel this way about a similar friend in college but with whom I didn't serve the public.  I've had a flurry of calls with former UCPD and OFD co-workers over this.  I really want to go to the funeral.  I miss being around them.  I have not regretted changing career paths, but right now all I want is to be in Oakland and sit around a firehouse table or run into AMR or OPD on a call and sit around and BS or just look at each other, and know.  I feel stranded out here.  I requested the use of one of my two days off for the year so I can attend the funeral.  I hope they don't reject my request just because it's not for a family member.  There is a very strong tie among those who wear navy blue, and even though I gave up the blue on the outside, I think I will always be a lot of blue on the inside.

My thoughts to the families and the kids who will grow up not knowing their dads, particularly Dan's, who I think must be about three years old by now.  I hope their sorrow soon abates to pride.

Where I Stand

Today, math nerds everywhere celebrated square root day.  

You know how violas are the butt of the orchestra and tubas get laid?  And truckees are not too bright, engineers are lazy and medics are wusses?  Or PE teachers are gay and chemistry teachers are dorks?  Subgroup analysis abounds everywhere, even in this nice little tool to help me find my life's calling:

Blissful Ignorance

I like knowing things, as any person might, but there are some things I just would have been okay not knowing.  I'm having many such experiences on OBGYN.  I have had enough vagina to last me a long, long time.  And I have really seen enough infected ones to last me forever.  I also get to be at the hospital by 5:30am to go look at them.  The good news?  I have narrowed my prospective career choice by yet another specialty.

25 Random Things About Me

There has been one of those silly chain things going around online lately. I usually don't fall for or participate in them, but since I have not had a post recently and I actually succumbed and wrote something back, here it is for your passing interest:

1. Though I worry about certain things, I usually delete chain letters without a single thought to the karmic implications.
2. I love when it rains and I am in bed with nowhere to go.
3. There was a period when I dreamed about being murdered or committing murder every night or every other night. Now I have nightmares about dirty houses.
   
4. I am not always grumpy in the morning.
   
5. I am currently a Disneyland annual pass holder. I never thought I would be one of "those people."
   
6. I know a Robin, a Hawk, a Jay, and a Bird.
   
7. I have always wanted a pet, but the one time I actually got one, I couldn't handle it.
   
8. I found a job four days after moving away to college. I worked at a bookstore. It lasted a few months until the creepy old stock guy with cigarette breath started standing too close to me on his breaks.
   
9. I eat sausage and hot dogs, but I don't eat pepperoni.
   
10. Of the things I used to do for work, I miss driving with lights and sirens the most.
    
11. When I was born, my dad was surprised to find I was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen. 
    
12. I am addicted to Dear Abby.
    
13. I never ditched or got detention in high school.
    
14. The longest I've stayed awake at once was 46 hours. At the 43rd hour, I played pickup basketball with the guys after work.
    
15. I like frozen yogurt better than ice cream.
    
16. My first career aspiration was a novelist. I started writing a novel when I was twelve. I quit because I hated my childish writing but didn't know how to fix it.
    
17. I am neither a leader nor a follower. I often wander off on my own.
    
18. I have only broken up then subsequently gotten back together with one man. 
    
19. Once when I was a new driver, I was so angry at something I actually called someone to pick me up because I didn't think I could drive. 
    
20. Excessively bubbly people seem either insincere or a little slow.
    
21. When I was a kid I got really good at sneaking peanut butter, which we weren't allowed to eat because it would stick to our teeth too much and give us cavities.
    
22. My mother used to let me run around in the snow in only diapers.
    
23. I buried a dead mouse on the way home from school once because I felt so sorry for it lying in the sidewalk. When I got home later than expected, my uncle said he was going to write a book called, "101 Excuses by Teenagers."
    
24. On the other hand, I used to chop off the heads of ants as a child and watch the headless body run around.
    
25. I have occasionally stood in front of the mirror making funny faces at myself and cracking up when home alone.

Anyone else care to share random facts about themselves?