It was 2:35 a.m. and I was in my office, across from my son’s bedroom, downloading firecracker sounds from the Internet. As soon as I hit “play,” my son leaped from his bed and appeared in my office doorway.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked. Ordinarily, I would object to his using the word “hell” when talking to me, but I let it slide because, if I had been assaulted by the sound of explosives while I slept, I know I would have used much stronger language.
“I’m recording firecracker noises from the computer onto my BlackBerry,” I told him.
“Why?”
“Sorry I woke you,” I responded.
“So, you’re not going to tell me why you’re playing firecracker sounds in the middle of the night?” he asked.
“Because,” I said, “I just spent two hours trying to get the dog to come in from the yard. Next time, I’m going to play the recording out the window and scare him into coming in.” Our dog, Rudy, goes crazy with fright when he hears firecrackers and fireworks.
“Oh, okay, that makes sense,” my son said, as he headed back to bed.
“You might want to close your door. I just found some fireworks sounds that I want to add to the recording. They’ll really scare Rudy.”
“Sure,” my son said as he closed his door.
Sometimes you have to go to extremes. If I have to scare my dog to death in order to get him into the house, then that’s the way it has to be. I recently took a CPR class where we were taught that you do what you have to do.
For instance, if you want to perform CPR on someone, you first have to ask his permission, and get expressed consent, before you start. If he says no, you can’t do anything except call for help. Then, you have to wait until help comes, or the person becomes unconscious. Once the person becomes unconscious, you can do whatever you want to him—within CPR guidelines, of course—because when a person is unconscious, he is giving you implied consent to perform CPR on him. Even if you mess up, you’re still protected under The Good Samaritan Law. Something about this sounds sketchy, even a little sinister, but who am I to question the rules?
Several years ago, one of my sisters took a water lifesaving course. She said that if the person you’re trying to save from drowning starts to fight with you—because he is panicking, or doesn’t want to be saved—you are allowed to knock him out, in order to save his life, and your own; you don’t want him drowning you while you try to rescue him. So, you can basically drag anyone you want out of the water, after beating him up, and consider yourself a Good Samaritan.
I’m just glad that it was my son, and not my husband, who was awakened by firecracker sounds in the house after midnight. If it were my husband, I would be the one who would need CPR, and my husband isn’t certified to perform it. Not that he would want to, anyway.
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