I saw the white crow fly

After two weeks of twentyfourseven first aid training I have passed both my written and practical tests and am now a certified Level Three Occupational First Aid Attendant. My advice to you is this: if you’re going to go down, do it in a hospital lobby. I’ve heard enough horrific stories and seen enough vile photographs in the past two weeks to make me hope against all hope that I never have to attend anyone involved in a massively painful event ever, ever, ever. Still, if you do intend to undergo severe blunt trauma to any part of your anatomy while I’m around, I promise to do the best I can to help you live through the experience. Failing that, I’ll work like a madman to keep your blood pumping until the doctors can harvest your organs. How’s that for a happy thought on a Monday morning?

I learned a lot more than just recognition of the stages of hypothermia, though. There were other things, too. Like I learned a bit more about snap judgments. Take my first aid instructor – we’ll call him James. He pulls in the first day and gets out of his absolutely beater-looking car wearing a tarnished old-school BC Lions Football jacket. He is a good deal overweight and seems a bit flustered. He’s about five-foot-eight with brown hair and a bit of reddish lining around his eyes. Have you got him pictured? Think you know him? Let us see.

James is British, for one, which you could not tell by looking at him, which means he’s got a nifty accent. For two, that Jacket you mocked as unstylish was actually given to him by one of the players on the team, who was one of James’ students. For three, he’s worked for years as a first aid attendant and a paramedic, saving thousands of lives – possibly the life of someone you know. For four, that ratty car with the oxidized paint job is actually a very rare Toyota that he’s been restoring bit by bit. It’s almost a metaphor for his life, which got thrashed by a raving beauty of a Russian vixen who left him with loads of debt because she found out the Muscovian consulate was not going to allow James to sponsor her family as well. As a sponsor of her efforts to become Canadian he was still under legal obligation to support her. He took on all their debt and let her keep their assets because he wanted his son and he knew the courts never favor the man. James got depressed. He ate a lot.

Like that car, though, he is a rare individual and he’s coming back. He is a champion table tennis player, good at sports, full of great stories, and a fanatical fan of the Arsenal soccer team. He chuckles a lot and has a good sense of humor. James has lost forty pounds in the last six months and he’s going to lose the rest of it over the next three years, as the doctor orders. He’s started a first aid school.

Appearances are often illusions created in our minds.

Backtar is an east Indian man. He wears a collared plaid shirt, some cheap slacks, puffy basketball shoes, a large mustache and a deep purple turban. He is tall – probably six-three – and a bit round in the gut. He steps through the door of our classroom, bangs both his fists on his chest, and says with a booming voice, “Who wants to wrestle me?” He lets us secure him to a spineboard for one of our first aid scenarios. Think you know him?

Backtar owns the first aid school. Backtar owns other businesses. A lot of them. Backtar is rich and powerful. He has a lot of friends.

One day I was sitting in class and for no reason I can understand, lights began to spark before my eyes. They were like beads of sunshine on spiderwebs, flashing and floating and prancing around in the air. It lasted only about five seconds, but it was the most beautiful fireworks display I’d ever seen, created for my eyes only by some “mis”-fired neurons in my mind.

Fresh appearances are a terrible and lovely thing.

I saw the white crow fly by. It swooped low across the road in front of me, accompanied by two of its black brethren. I wonder what they think of it, an isolated miracle like that. I wonder about its life. Was it driven here to this more accepting crow population by a murder of tyrannical crow bullies? Has it been appreciated and valued for its whiteness, or reviled? Does it live in fear of cold-minded scientists who wish to murder to dissect?

Today, at least, I am glad it flies free and will die unrestrained in all but our memories. I am glad for the miracle of the white crow.