Oh, be proud of him ['cause after all, he's just a man...]

In the last 13 years, I've had four jobs. Four jobs where I sit at a nice desk and type a lot, and one of the biggest irks is when someone empties the coffee pot and doesn't start brewing another.

In the last 13 years, my brother-in-law Shawn has had one job. And his one makes all four of mine, even added together, look pretty paltry.

After 13 years, he made his last run on an ambulance for the St. Louis City Fire Department this week, and tonight we celebrated. My sister invited M and me to Shawn's going away party, and we were there to see the steady stream of friends flow in and out to say hello and goodbye and congratulations. We got to meet his last City partner, who has been his partner for four years. They joked that by this point they are like an old married couple, and I can totally see how that would happen.

We got a peek into the STLFD family, and it looks pretty amazing. These are people who have seen shit that most of us never will, things that we couldn't even imagine. These people have stories.

And in that vein, I'll share my favorite story from Shawn. Now, it's way better to hear it told in person, and Shawn is really the person who tells it the best, but you'll just have to bear with me. Some of you have heard this before, I'm sure, since it's one of our favorites. Some of you have probably heard it multiple times.

Shawn responded to a call and arrived at the scene to find a large black man with a gaping head wound. He said it looked awful. So he and his partner did what they are trained to do: they got the guy patched up and on the ambulance to take him to the hospital. After making sure he was okay, while they were driving to the hospital, Shawn asked him what had happened. He had never seen a head wound like this before and he just had to know. Apparently the patient had gotten into an argument with his wife/girlfriend/baby mama.

"Da bitch hit me wit da smoov."
"The smooth?"
"Yeah, man. Da bitch hit me wit da smoov."

Shawn must have looked confused, because the man then went on to explain.

"You know, man. Da smoov. What you use to smoov out your clothes." He made a motion like he was ironing.

Shawn lost it. "Dude, she hit you in the head with an iron?!"

Yep, that's what happened.

Last year our family started a habit of saying a Hail Mary every time we hear sirens. We learned it from someone on one of our ACTS retreats and thought it sounded like a good thing to do. For a long time, I thought we were praying for whomever was being helped. After all, that's how it was presented to us.

But here's the thing: the people driving those ambulances and fire trucks and police cars...they need our prayers just as much. We go about our business every day, commuting to work and running our errands and bitching about a rough day at the office or the asshole who cut us off on 40/64. We don't usually give those people - the people driving the ambulances, fire trucks and police cars - a second thought.

Until we need them.

Then, they're there. They show up and they take care of us, no matter what color our skin is or what kind of car we're driving or what kind of clothes we're wearing or how much money we have in our pocketbook. The first responders are just that: the first ones in, and they very often risk their own lives to help people they've never met and most likely will never see again.

I looked around the room tonight at people who look just like you and me. They have regular clothes and they were drinking beer and they were singing karaoke, sometimes really, really well and sometimes not so much.

If you didn't know them, you'd never know they are heroes.

Hail Mary,
Full of grace
The Lord is with thee
Blessed art thou among women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus
Holy Mary, Mother of God
Pray for us sinners now,
And at the hour of our death

Congratulations to Shawn on his new job. He'll still be saving lives; he just won't have the bat-shit crazy stories that come with working in the city. Let me know when you're ready to tell your tales, brother. I'll be your typist, editor and ghost writer. I love you.

(Today's pic is Shawn, belting out Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man," because his goofy sister-in-law made the request. Ever the good sport, Shawn went up there and sang with gusto. "Sometimes it's hard...to be a woman...")

Well...damn

My very first computer was an Apple IIe.  I got it in high school and it was The Shit.  I could play games on it, and write my homework papers on it.  And I could shove a big ol' giant five-inch floppy disk in the drive and save my stuff forever.

Because so many computers can read a five-inch floppy these days.

In college, once I transitioned from the pc-engineering life into the j-school, I went back to Apple.  Macs, to be specific.  The World's Finest School of Journalism offered its students the "Mac Lab."  Countless hours spent there doing homework I couldn't finish on my good ol' 486 pc.

Then I entered The Working World, where everyone but designers and photographers used a pc.  I got used to the Blue Screen of Death.  I got used to freezes and computers that wouldn't turn off until you unplugged the damn things.  I got used to big, bulky, black or cream-colored behemoths that looked like some old and crusty computer crank put it together.

A decade later, I was back into photography, and I had gone to the Dark Side (digital).  Which meant I needed a computer.  After years and years of growing comfortable with pc, with learning the systems inside and out, with knowing how to trouble-shoot and problem-solve on my own, I demanded a return to Mac.

My trusty Mac G5 tower served me faithfully.  Sometimes I'd overload it with a giant image file or it'd hit a webpage it didn't like and the little color wheel would spin round, but it happened so rarely that I didn't think anything of it.  I loved my Mac.

I loved it so much that I filled it up.  Plum ran out of memory.  We went to look at inserting more memory, learned just how "vintage" it was, and I upgraded to a gorgeous huge iMac.  On which I type now.  Next to me sits my iPhone4, which is such an integral part of everyday life that I have sworn that I will never, ever not have an iPhone if I can help it.  In my backpack is stowed a Macbook that my work purchased for me upon request (because my company is that cool).  Basically, I have an Apple product at my side nearly every moment of every day.

I think that what Apple has done, besides all the innovation (did you know Apple invented the first mouse?) and cool gadgetry, is taught us that technology can be beautiful.  That form is just as important as, and maybe even contributes to, function.  If you have to be surrounded by, and use, something every single day, isn't it better when it's elegant?  And just freakin' works?

Apple said today, "The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."

Amen.

Farewell to a Beggar

We lost one of our own today.  I am starting to get really, really incredibly pissed off at this death thing.  It sucks any way you look at it.  If you know the person is nearing the end (whether it's because of age or cancer or whatever) it sucks.  If you don't know, because the person is young and reasonably healthy and there's no reason to suspect anything is amiss, it sucks.  I was in the latter camp today, blindsided by it.

So I cried for her, and for my family, and for the unfairness of it, and for the selfishness of not getting to say goodbye.  Or rather, not knowing that our last goodbye was our last goodbye.

And I was reminded once again that life is fleeting and we have one chance at this...one chance to do and experience as much as we can and to not take a single day for granted.

Anyone who knows me knows that I look for the silver lining in everything.  It's always there.  Sometimes it's hard to find, but it's there.  My silver lining today is to take the gift that she gave us, the lesson that the best way to live, the only way to really live, is to live on our terms, no one else's.  She was tough and independent, had gorgeous Cherokee cheekbones, and could throw horseshoes better than most men.  If I had to use only one word to describe her, it's fierce.  I loved and respected her for that.  I want to be as fierce as she was some day.

RIP Aunt Mary Ann.  You are loved and you will be missed.