After EMS: Costumes, Kids, and Caregivers
This article is part of an ongoing series from Mike Rubin. In this series, he’ll reflect on his career and share practical retirement advice for emergency medical personnel. Catch up on articles you missed.
Two of our grandkids stopped by to show us their Halloween costumes before trick-or-treating with friends. Hunter, who’s almost six, told Helen and me he’s Bumblebee Transformer. Maybe so, but at Hunter’s age, all I knew about transformers was not to touch one if I climbed a telephone pole. My grandmother had warned me about a kid from The Bronx named Morris who did that on a dare. I had to promise not to be like Morris. I’ve tried.
Hunter’s sister, Emmylou, three, was dressed as Super Kitty. When I asked her if that’s better than Just Plain Kitty, she looked at me as if I should be elsewhere, so I took a ride with Emmy’s father and started planning a column about transformers, costumes, and EMS. And Morris.
When little kids dress up, do you think they know it’s make-believe? I’m asking because, during my preschool years, I used to wear a head-to-toe cowboy outfit almost every Talent Round-Up Day (Friday) on The Mickey Mouse Club. I’m pretty sure I considered myself as much of a desperado as any of the Wild West performers on that show, but if you took away the costume, as my mother once did because I’d torn the buttons off my jacket, I was no more of a gunslinger than Judy Garland. My cowboy outfit made me who I was—or who I wanted to be.
I’m trying to remember if EMS was that way. How much did the uniform help me feel and act like a paramedic? A little, I suppose, but only if it was neat and clean and not loaded with useless accessories like bite sticks, finger splints, or 26 pairs of gloves. If you keep finding gloves stuck to your car keys, you’re doing something wrong.
Is there a difference between a uniform and a costume? My dictionary defines the latter as “a set of clothes appropriate for a particular occasion” or “a practice followed as a matter of course among a people.” If going to work with my fellow people qualifies as an occasion, then I was in costume for 30 years—more if you count those Talent Round-Up days.
My last uniform did seem like a costume to me. It emphasized informality rather than rescue, all because of a swollen river raging through Middle Tennessee. In May of 2010, after two days of rain, the mighty Cumberland rose 30 feet and flooded Opryland, Nashville’s country-music mecca, where I worked as a medic for six years. Our uniforms were drenched in medical waste (think floating sharps containers) before being replaced with grubby T-shirts for several months of building repairs. On duty, we looked and felt like ditch diggers with defibrillators.
By Thanksgiving, we’d switched to unadorned, all-purpose dress shirts without any of the usual EMS embellishments. I’m guessing the goal was to blend with Opryland’s merchants and servers instead of standing out as people you’d call for help. In that customer-friendly costume, the only healthcare job I deserved is Emergency Spa Attendant.
I missed wearing the patches and trim that signaled competence to the general public, but my patients seemed at ease with me looking more like a poolside waiter than a paramedic. My colleagues and I never appeared at Opryland again attired as EMS professionals. Today, that property has none.
What do I think of costumes now? Morris should have dressed as something insulated.
Mike’s Exit Poll #12: What’s your favorite snack?
I put on a little weight when I stopped riding—say, 40 pounds. I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it until Helen threw the challenge flag while proofreading an early draft of this piece.
“A little weight?” she protested. “That’s a little weight only if you eat seals whole.”
I thought that was funny in a way apex predators would appreciate, but I’d still rather talk about snacks for humans. My favorite was a brand of dark chocolate that rhymes with “big belly,” which is what I had before 10 years of dieting. Now I have the build of a retired Bumblebee Transformer. You wouldn’t want to mess with me.
Ahh, those one-inch chocolate squares were worth the girth. I loved their rich, slightly bitter flavor. Then I found out dark chocolate has more heavy metal than nuclear submarines—bad news unless the doctor says you’re not getting enough cadmium.
I don’t snack on chocolate anymore. Still, life is good: I’ve dropped 35 pounds, seals are safe around me, and I’m worth more in raw materials than all the wiring in my car.
Mike Rubin is a retired paramedic and the author of Life Support, a collection of EMS stories. Contact Mike at mgr22@prodigy.net.
