Life Through the Eyes of an Ambulance Driver

My Alma Mater, Mississippi State University, has had a pathetic excuse for a football team since the turn of this century. The loss in the egg bowl, against our biggest rivals, the Ole Miss Rebels, had to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Losing 45-0 is an embarrassment that can’t go unnoticed.

Today, Sylvester Croom, head football coach for MSU resigned. Its about time. He has only had 1 winning season in his 5 years compiling a 21-38 record. Considering MSU is in the SEC, considered by many the strongest conference in the NCAA, there is no excuse to not be able to recruit talent and field a good team. Croom went 4-8 this season, making $1.7 million. I’d have to say, after seeing the computer labs that we were given to work with while I was a student there, there are a lot better places that kind of money could have been spent.

Saw this and thought it was funny. It’s Will Ferrell’s character Ricky Bobby from the movie Talladega Nights – The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (Unrated Widescreen Edition).

Here’s the deal I’m the best there is. Plain and simple. I wake up in the morning and I piss excellence.

I was excited at the prospect of finding great deals online for Black Friday with retailers offereing prospects of big sales online. I must say I was disappointed on two levels. One, I didn’t find anything I really wanted that was a great deal. Two, I’m broke. So po, I can’t afford the ‘o’ and the ‘r’ to go with it.

For example, my laptop is 5 years old. I’m surprised it is still working, being a Dell. That and surprisingly, I can still use it for my daily needs, except for any computer game made in the last 4 years. But otherwise, it still serves the original purpose I got it for, being my entertainment center. I’ve been eyeing Apple’s the new Ipod Touch. Now that our ambulances have wifi, we can sit and play on the Internet all day (such as I am making this post). The Itouch, as it sometimes referred to, would allow me to peruse the Internet from the front of my ambulance without having to lug this bohemouth around. With Apple’s traditional Black Friday Sale, I was hoping maybe, just maybe, I could get a smokin deal on one. But, the best I could find was about $20 off. Yeah, that’s better than nothing, but with my pathetic hourly wage, I still can’t see where I can afford $200 for a luxury item like that. So, here I sit with my ancient computer, still doing the same thing I’d be able to do with the Itouch, just $200 cheaper.

Ordinarily, getting the opportunity to sing “Start your day with DOA, doo dahh, doo dahh…” (sung to the tune of Camptown Races) is funny. But not today. Its supposed to be the day when families drive from around town to a family member’s house to enjoy each other’s company and have a wonderful piece of Granny Schikelgroober’s pumpkin pie. But that isn’t what happened. Instead, today was the day when Granny Schiklegroober wakes up dead only to be found by family. Its sad. I feel bad for the family who is having to cope with the lost of their loved one today.

It’s comical how many fire alarms that the fire dept went on today. The majority of them were in the first half of the day, which is when people are cooking. It appears there are a number of people that don’t know how to cook without trying to burn down their house. My personal favorite is when the fire dept got called on a structure fire. It turned out to be an oven fire. I can just picture it. People are panicking as they watch flames erupting INISDE their oven. I emphasize inside. Lets think about this. The inside of the oven is nothing but metal. Its designed to withstand a lot of heat. You know, if you close the door, there’s a great chance that the fire won’t get outside of the oven and it might just extinguish itself because it will burn the oxygen in there. This isn ‘t rocket science people.

There was a somewhat good dinner for us to eat today. Surprisingly, there was no Turkey. How do you have Thanksgiving without Turkey? There was some tasty honey baked ham that the company sprung for. It wasn’t a Thanksgiving dinner like mom makes, but it was better than the ham sandwich I packed in my lunch box.

I looked at my paycheck stub that was in my mailbox today, only to find how disappointing the pay rate was for one of my shifts. I picked up a 24 hr shift last pay period and discovered that I was only paid the state minimum wage of $7.02/hr.  Ordinarily my regular wage is a paltry $10.04/hr. I don’t understand how my company can justify to pay me less money per hour to do the exact same work. Not only that, how they can justify paying me minimum wage. Uneducated, unskilled idiots get paid minimum wage to do mindless tasks with shovels and dirt. I am an educated skilled worker doing a job that requires me to have a 3 certifications, a driver’s license, and a clean criminal background to do my job.