I was a truck driver a few years ago, working on a dedicated account that had me rapidly experiencing burnout. 14-hour days, sleeping in the truck. I was supposed to work 5 days a week, but more often than not, I’d have to work a 6th day to end up at my house. I technically got weekends off, but I had to go back to work at 12:01 on Monday morning, to stay on time. I was in a death spiral for a while there.

One morning, having overslept, I’d let myself get into a rush, and I’d backed my truck into a parking bollard at my first pickup. Damaged my hood, bumper, mirrors, and a bunch of other important bits. My truck was going to be in the shop for a few weeks, at least.

After my safety department got their pound of flesh, my dispatcher gave me some alternative work in the meantime, covering for an absent driver in a local position. Said position involved doing shuttle runs for a nearby factory, just taking truckloads of their product to a warehouse a few miles away, dropping them off, and bringing empty trailers back to the factory. No appointments, no paperwork, no live unloads. Just showing up and driving, for an hourly wage instead of mileage. 8-hour shifts, without having to sleep on the truck. A diamond in the rough I didn’t even know my company offered.

I asked to be moved to that position, and I was instantly approved, since dispatch wanted to replace that other driver anyway. That was late February 2020; shortly after I got acclimated to the new digs, the pandemic hit. I didn’t lose my job; my trucking company kept all of their shuttle drivers on-site at the factory. Said factory only ran a skeleton crew though, not putting out enough product to keep all of us busy. None of the drivers complained though, we embraced getting paid to sit on our asses with open arms.

I was parked on the side of PCH and my friend and I were going to cross over to head down to the beach. He crossed in the middle of the road. I continued on to the intersection. Before I got to the intersection, I looked down and found $40 on the ground. There was no one around and no cars nearby. When my friend seemed a bit grumpy for making him wait while I took the long way, I said, “here,” and held out my hand and gave him one of the bills. We went to the nearby punk record store and bought some albums and 45s and ate lunch at a hippie Mexican place.

About to pass out at home watching 2001. Worked 6-days a week, Saturday night was my only time alone, spent Sundays healing up to go hang cable again. No friends or family, alone in Chicagoland.

Knock on my door. No one can get there unless they’re already in the building. WTF. It’s the Mexican chick from downstairs and her little 19-yo friend I had never met.

I’ll spare the gruesome details, but apparently they both decided, “Imma FUCK him!” And they did. And each other. It was… something else. And I almost didn’t answer the door.

Was at the San Francisco Public Library with da hubs, checking out DVDs/CDs, and on our way out saw a flyer for IIRC “Celluloid San Francisco” a presentation by the author of a new book about movies made here.

We figured “Why Not?” Walked in and was entertained for about an hour by a very personable speaker and tons of SF film facts!

Then they unexpectedly ushered the lot of us across the hall to a catered buffet lunch, meet and greet, and book signing (none of which was mentioned on the flyer).

We also went in slightly less higher than god…

So we proceeded to stuff our faces from a delicious buffet, chat up the author and thank him for an amazing presentation, and then left around 2:30 not having paid a penny for anything.

Girl Talk in 09 in Vancouver. We were early at the venue and they were selecting a few people to be up on stage for the whole show. Never sweat so hard in my life.

I’m a 911 dispatcher

Was once at a party where a motorcycle crashed right outside.

By the time I got outside, 911 had already been called, my friend was already performing CPR. I know he’s been trained, so I let him keep at it, made sure he was doing it right, counted with him to keep time, and basically repeated the same CPR script I’ve given over the phone countless times and stood by in case he got tired and needed me to take over.

EMS shows up, as they’re running over with their equipment they tell my friend to get the guys shirt open, he starts undoing buttons, I tell him to just pop them, a couple lost buttons are the least of this guys problems, and every second counts.

I’m 99% certain this guy was dead the moment he hit the ground, but regardless of what the outcome was (I’ll probably never know and am OK with that, I’m used to that from my job, after I hang up with my caller I often don’t get much if any follow-up on how a call turns out,) if you’re going to crash a motorcycle and go into cardiac arrest, short of doing it outside an ER, you can’t do much better than the house with a 911 dispatcher and counting myself and my friend who was doing CPR, no fewer than 4 eagle scouts.

There were a handful of bystanders pulled over not doing much of anything but standing around. I got the impression that they were already there not being particularly helpful when my friend started doing CPR. Looked like the kinds of guys who fancy themselves to be real rugged tough guys, driving big trucks and whatnot. The bystander effect was on display there. I’m pretty sure one of them was the person who called 911, which means they didn’t really check on the guy, because if they had they would have been on the phone with one of my coworkers getting CPR instructions and doing it themselves. Remember that people don’t usually rise to the occasion, they fall to their level of training.

Went over that bridge in Baltimore last year about an hour before it collapsed. Felt lucky

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