First Aid/CPR

Tonight I finished up my two day CPR/First Aid course. I renew it every two years because when I take kids on field trips, someone has to be certified. I figure it may as well be me since I can always count on me to go on my own field trips. Anyway, the class is from 4:30 to 8:30 on two different days. So after a full day of work I run over to the class which has no breaks. It's basically a 12 hour day. Which brings me to the following photos. I knew I wanted to blog about the class. However I started to get rather punchy as the night went on, and these are the result. Oh, and the title picture above was created from bits of Kettle Corn that fell out of the bag as we ate it.

This is the Annie mannequin we rescued repeatedly. When I took my first CPR course in high school, our Annie was a girl, had hair, eyes, clothes and limbs. Oh, Annie how far you've fallen.

We also learned to use an AED (defibrillator thingy...and yes, that's how you spell it. I looked it up.) Annie has a breathing mask over her face, and we used a strip of foil so the machine would detect a closed circuit. After I took this picture, the instructor said, "Okay...I've never had that happen before." I guess not very many people blog about their CPR class.

The best part of the entire course was that we all brought snacks to share. I was able to take the class with my friend Cara, who is another music teacher in district. This is her hand taking some of the Kettle Corn I brought. Which of course led to the CPR popcorn picture above.

Another music person, Dan, brought red licorice and trail mix. I, of course, proceeded to throw pieces of candy at Cara when she was trying to do compressions. She threw it back at me during my turn, which then caused me to laugh and lose count. So I guess my victim died. But that's okay, because I really like red licorice.

Cara brought these pretzel things. They were really good because of all the fake butter flavor.

When we started the infant portion, Cara gave the pretzels to our baby and kept saying, "Where's the beer? Where's the beer?" See, I wasn't the only one going loopy.

When our baby was supposed to be choking, I decided she was choking on the pretzels. This is where I put the pretzels in so they would go flying out when we gave her 5 whacks on the back, followed by 5 infant (2 finger) compressions. Hey, I did learn stuff while goofing off!

So is there any moral to all of these useless ramblings? I have decided it is twofold.

1. CPR classes should not go for four hours with no breaks after a full day of work.

2. Never take a CPR class with me.