Ashley Winchester May 23, 2009
Last night, I went to see Terminator Salvation with a friend of mine. On the way to the film the subject turned towards the town we live in, and unfortunately, my father’s impact on it being on council.
This has been a pretty bitter subject between us for years now. While I honestly dislike the wrath my father invokes from some of the people he pisses someone off, I sincerely think there is a need for a person to "tell it like it is" and "cut through the crap" although I don't like everything about the way he conducts business. However, my friend thinks he goes too far and is against the closing of a certain building (a gymnasium) in or neighborhood that my father (and I) are for. His argument is it could be a shelter in a time of crisis (he's volunteer firefighter) and would leave them without a place to hold the blood drive and their “precious” gun raffles. I personally don't think the building is worth the annual $19,000 drain on the community and considering the populace of the town and the state of the economy raising taxes to continue to accommodate it would be a poor idea.
What makes this especially infuriating is I'll allow him to make shots towards my father to maintain peace but there are certain people he knows that I'm not allowed to take shots at but he can.
Anyway, moving on to discussion that led me to post this topic. After we got back to his house after the movie, the discussion eventually hit upon his job as an EMT. He then began spouting off this crap how people treat EMT's like crap, how EMT's are underpaid and deserve more, how it was "National EMT Week" and "no one thanked him for the sacrifices he makes." Seriously, I would have rather painted the wall with my own brains than listen to him feed his ego.
Do EMT's save lives? Yes. But no one held a gun to your head and said you had to be one. No one said you had to follow in your parents footsteps. No one said you had to make such sacrifices. When it's "National Blue Collar Worker Week" no one thanks me. No, I don't save lives but it is possible to have pride in a job where you don't. I don't mind working in a factory setting while you say loaded statements like "I'll never work in a factory again" yet you got fired from three EMT jobs prior to getting this (hence the word professional being in parentheses) your fourth one, which you had to leave the area for because your reputation was so tarnished? You have the audacity to try and "save me" from my dead end, blue collar existence when you have to travel two hours to work because you don't have a place of residence there yet because you're afraid of getting axed? I don't want your help, because it's not "heart-felt, friend" help, it's "I need to boost myself up to feel important" help. That's what all of this is about and I'm tired of it.
Uh, sorry, that last paragraph ended up being a little more personal than I wanted it to be (maybe its practice?) but I think you get the point. I really think there are two kinds of people that want to help people with these kinds of jobs: those who truly want to help people and those who think they want to help people but really need an outlet to stroke their own ego.
