I was at a bar tonight and saw three people die.

[Insomniac]

It was about fifteen or twenty past one a.m. I and three of my friends were sitting at the bar and the door was open behind us. We heard something and looked behind us and saw a car across the street and a lot of dust kicked up. I swear I heard the squeal of brakes and turned in time to see a crash, but in retrospect, I must not have because I was under the impression someone ran into a wall until I was corrected later.

One friend of the three friends was a former EMT and is still certified through 2012, so he took off out the door toward the wreck. The other two went out the door as well but stopped when the cop arrived, which wasn't but half a minute after the wreck. Either he had heard reports of someone speeding, or it was just serendipity. Out of peer pressure, I went out the door after them. Everyone was doing it, all that.

I don't know if it's this place or the Internet in general, but I was laughing, and this caused a bartender to snap at me.

"Why are you laughing?” she said. “They could be dead."

And I assumed they were, but there was something absurd about it, and I couldn't help but laugh. It's one a.m., likely they were drunk, and when some bikers showed up, they were talking about how fast these people (in a Camaro) had been going further up street, apparently still going that fast in a semi-residential area. And then a wreck. Whoosh! Like that, it’s over.

For some reason, it was ridiculous and absurd, and I still find it funny, not in the least because everyone in the bar went back inside and kept drinking (I ordered a Coke).

But the fact that police were there didn't stop my friend from having to pronounce the people there. There were two vehicles, we found out when he came back. One of them had been traveling too fast and apparently none were wearing their seatbelts. One white young man, who had shot fifty feet or so out of the car, one Hispanic young man, who had gone through the window of Lowe's and (except for his leg) into a Coke machine. And the last was a woman who I think was otherwise healthy and okay, except that she was dead.

My friend took their pulses, closed their eyes, and pronounced them dead for the record.

There was another vehicle — a pickup — that was involved in the wreck. These people were actually at fault because the Camaro had the right-of-way. At this time of night, the streetlights flash yellow going the way the Camaro was, and the pickup had a flashing red light. A stop sign, in other words. These surviving people were also drunk, but a little older, and they were all wearing their seatbelts, so they were just wondering what had happened. The EMT told me all this later in the night.

When he came back to the bar he was shaking and distraught, but trying not to be, and he went inside to wash the blood off his hands. He came back outside where we were all gawking and my other two friends said he needed a drink, so they bought him a beer and a shot. Again, I found this uproariously funny, but this time I didn't say so. We've just watched three people our ages die because of alcohol and stupidity, and our response is to drink more.

Then the two other friends tried to console the EMT by saying things like, "Shit happens," or "It was their fault."

"I drive drunk all the time, but I don't do it stupid. I mean, I've swerved, but I don't go over 50 in a residential area. That’s just asking for it."

The ex-EMT has seen dead bodies before and worked on bloody people, but he was bothered by this, probably because he hasn't done anything like this in several years. He talked about feeling for the pulse of a warm body that doesn't have one. Later we went to eat and he talked about the dried blood that was still under his fingernails that he couldn't get out.

But I didn't care, and I didn't pretend to care. For some reason, I was more bothered by my other two friends disparaging the dead without knowing for certain the circumstances, but for these total strangers, I had no empathy as far as their lives as human beings. Just a random occurrence. There was blame and responsibility to go around, but they'd probably done stupid things before. They didn't have to die that night. Their time didn’t come up, they just got in a wreck, and it killed them.

Anyway, after about half an hour more at the bar, the EMT wanted to go eat, and I did, too. The other two didn't and went to smoke weed and go home instead.

At the restaurant, the EMT told me some more details (such as front windshield that was completely missing after three people had gone through it or the mystery of where the back half of the Camaro had gotten to), and I listened because it was interesting to me, but not emotionally. And we joked about how he was aroused at the dead girl and a terrible person for lifting up her shirt and seeing she didn't have a bra. And fingering her to take her pulse. And fingering the assholes of the men to take theirs, too. These were jokes (he didn’t finger anyone), but the girl actually was actually attractive and our age. If she’d been in the bar with us and not lying dead on the street, we’d have been hitting on her.

And I don't know. I don't think I'm so cynical or jaded, or try to be. Maybe if I'd been in his place, I would have reacted the same, but older I get, the less I see tragedy, and the more I see absurdity.

We think we're so important and our lives matter so much, but ultimately our lives end and we're the subject of interest for five to ten minutes, and then everyone goes back inside and keeps drinking. No lesson learned, no nothing.

I told someone else this and he said it stems from the change of growing up. As a child, or adolescent, everything that happens is such a tragedy or triumph, but as we get older, lives are more absurd and realist. We still have the tragedies and triumphs, but “we party, regulate and neutralize ourselves and our emotions by sharing bonds, and pushing the limits.” The extraordinary is just part of another day, he said.

I don’t know. In high school, this would have been a big deal, I guess because you would have known or expected to have known whoever it was. But this is just people living and dying. Just a typical event on a Saturday night.

Funnier thing than maybe all the rest, just before the wreck, the EMT and I were talking about snuffx.com and a video of a guy who killed himself doing a one-handed pushup over a knife while masturbating. And how hilarious it was.

[Menace2Sobriety]

Always wear your safety belt.

[Menace2Sobriety]

At this time of night, the streetlights flash yellow going the way the Camaro was, and the pickup had a flashing red light.I don't understand this. What happens during the day?

[Insomniac]

They're red, yellow, and green traffic lights like normal during the day.

[Genius]

EMTs that think about fingering dudes assholes are pretty absurd.

[Axel]

Insomniac, what should be a philosophical issue here? Your sense of humor?

[freegood]

Sometimes its hard to mourn the dead. It's expected but not everyone is wired that way.

I wonder if the people who get uppity against those who don't show respect do it because it's the right thing to do, out of habit, or maybe they want the same respect shown to them when they kick it.

There's nothing absurd about death. Maybe our reactions to it. And maybe it's the absurdity of how some of us coast by life thinking our time expires when it's exactly right.

[Bill Paxton]

I dunno, maybe its just me, or maybe im not old enough yet but I still get sick to my stomach when I see stuff like this, even when I don't know the people.

[Archetype]

I was wondering about comedy and tragedy a while back, and the relationship between the two, trying to figure out some sort of definition. At the time it seemed like tragedy is a ridiculous, negative occurrence or sequence of events that you're connected to personally; comedy is just sans that connection. It wouldn't necessarily be the definition of everything that's sad or funny, but it kinda makes sense. Why it's so easy sometimes to laugh at a horror movie, or cringe when something embarrassing happens in a supposed romantic "comedy."

But even as I want to laugh at some of this, and totally understand what you're talking about (except for the getting old part, at least not directly), I'm absolutely positive it's the wrong response. Or evil, if you wanna go that way. Laughing and joking can help you get through a situation, but when you don't feel it at all and immediately go to the laughing and think it's a joke in itself, it seems like that process of grief or mourning or whatever it is that you call it went too far. Almost like a Platonic abolishment of the poet within. Cutting off a vital part that makes us human.

It is weird though, does morality extend to the dead? I mean, I've never really felt that loss that other people feel at funerals. All I get is some second hand sorrow. It never seems to really hit me that this person or that person is gone, is this because I never felt them here to begin with, or because that whole golden rule/divine love/altruist ideal has been so ingrained in me, that I just don't care about my own loss? I hope for the latter, but fear it's likely the former.

[Soup Nazi]

You lost me at the fingering part.

[mcnastasty]

you guys get deep over in these parts..

I quit driving drunk 4 years ago when a friend of mine flipped his truck (that he wasn't driving) and is now basically a 10 year old in a 26 year old body. Had his whole life ahead of him.

Laughing at death..hm...that's a tough one. Guess if I actually thought about it I can understand where you are coming from, drunk people, driving gettign what they eventually deserved. The other side, the bar tender's side, is what 97% (rough estimate) people would have thought about your chuckle.

[Kerjack]

I felt bad that I didn't cry at my sisters funeral. I was more annoyed with the bus loads on kids that came to the funeral just to get out of school for a few hours, and the preacher that kept saying 'if' she goes to heaven.

[Hanover Fist]

I had a similar situation occur with a pretty good friend of mine like 4 years ago.
Driving drunk (he was actually front seat passenger), driving INTO town the police estimate a speed of 85mph at time of impact with a large oak tree on the passenger side front door of the Jeep Grand Cherokee. 5 passengers, 3 killed (my friend included).
They actually came to rest outside the house of a guy i used to work with. He said he heard the crash, ran outside and saw three kids laying side by side on his front lawn gurgling and bleeding profusely from various wounds.
The 2 in the front seat were dead and the 3 in the back were ejected on the lawn.
I think one of the worst things about it all was seeing my buddies parents at his viewing, you could just tell that they thought their lives were over as well. I even see his dad occasionally and I don't think he has recovered from it still.

[Hoser]

Since when can EMT's pronounce people dead??

[Hanover Fist]

Since when can EMT's pronounce people dead??


I don't know if EMT's can but Paramedics can.

[Aphashia]

Funnier thing than maybe all the rest, just before the wreck, the EMT and I were talking about snuffx.com and a video of a guy who killed himself doing a one-handed pushup over a knife while masturbating. And how hilarious it was.

Now I am curious to go watch to snuffx.com and watch that video.

Is it gruesome? or handleable?

Oh and nice read

[Archangel]

Since when can EMT's pronounce people dead??

Well, if a bloke's head is in one place, and his torso is in another, do you really need a professional surgeon in America to tell?

[Skybase]

I felt bad that I didn't cry at my sisters funeral. I was more annoyed with the bus loads on kids that came to the funeral just to get out of school for a few hours, and the preacher that kept saying 'if' she goes to heaven.


Seriously, "IF"?. . My gawd. . .I remember when a rash of girls committed suicide while I was in high school, and tons of ppl fake crying and leaving, taking a week off of school (excused) that never knew any of them just to get out of school as well. . it is really irritating.

I'm pretty ticked about the whole thing really, the way it sounded like my parents' church acted toward the guy that hit her too.

[Pharon]

I think one of the worst things about it all was seeing my buddies parents at his viewing, you could just tell that they thought their lives were over as well. I even see his dad occasionally and I don't think he has recovered from it still.
I can't imagine it ever being possible to recover from experiencing the death of your own child. There's nothing I'm more afraid of.

In fact, that's the only thing I'm afraid of now.

[Crack]

http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/funny-pictures-darwin-award-snake.jpg

No sympathy

[Hoser]

Well, if a bloke's head is in one place, and his torso is in another, do you really need a professional surgeon in America to tell?

Yep, you need an MD or coroner to do it. an EMT can opt not to treat a person who is obviously dead. i.e. no head or other stuff like that. But a MD or coroner must pronounce them dead, it can even be done over the phone but they are the ones to do it. They are also the ones who sign the death certificate.

I don't know if EMT's can but Paramedics can.

No they can't.

[Hanover Fist]

Yep, you need an MD or coroner to do it. an EMT can opt not to treat a person who is obviously dead. i.e. no head or other stuff like that. But a MD or coroner must pronounce them dead, it can even be done over the phone but they are the ones to do it. They are also the ones who sign the death certificate.



No they can't.

Apparently it depends on the state you live in, some allow paramedics to declare death.

A first responder (http://webshots.search.com/reference/Certified_first_responder) is not authorized to pronounce a patient dead. Some EMT (http://webshots.search.com/reference/Emergency_medical_technician) training manuals (http://webshots.search.com/reference/Training_manual) specifically state that a person is not to be assumed dead unless there are clear and obvious indications that death has occurred.[8] (http://webshots.search.com/reference/Death#_note-Limmer) These indications include mortal decapitation (http://webshots.search.com/reference/Decapitation), rigor mortis (http://webshots.search.com/reference/Rigor_mortis) (rigidity of the body), livor mortis (http://webshots.search.com/reference/Livor_mortis) (blood pooling in the part of the body at lowest elevation), decomposition, incineration, or other bodily damage that is clearly inconsistent with life. If there is any possibility of life and in the absence of a do not resuscitate (http://webshots.search.com/reference/Do_not_resuscitate) (DNR) order, emergency workers (http://webshots.search.com/reference/Emergency_service) are instructed to begin rescue and not end it until a patient has been brought to a hospital to be examined by a physician. This frequently leads to situation of a patient being pronounced dead on arrival (http://webshots.search.com/reference/Dead_on_arrival) (DOA). However, some states allow paramedics (http://webshots.search.com/reference/Paramedics) to pronounce death. This is usually based on specific criteria. Aside from the above mentioned, conditions include advanced measures including CPR, intubation (http://webshots.search.com/reference/Intubation), IV access, and administering medicines without regaining a pulse for at least 20 minutes.

[Archangel]

So until someone with an MD looks at him, the bloke is like Schrödinger's cat?

[Claydon]

interesting story, it reminds me a far side comic with the caption "this is how nature culls out the weak." or in this case the weak minded.

[Hanover Fist]

So until someone with an MD looks at him, the bloke is like Schrödinger's cat?

Physically no, if you're dead you're dead and having someone declare or not declare makes no difference.

Legally yes, you must have a declaration of death for all sorts of post-mortem things to occur regarding insurance, power of attorney, executor of estate, wills etc etc etc...

[Pharon]

interesting story, it reminds me a far side comic with the caption "this is how nature culls out the weak." or in this case the weak minded.
Maybe I read it wrong but I got the impression that some of the dead were just victims of circumstance - at least the ones in the car that went through the yellow blinking light. What did they do except be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

[Claydon]

Maybe I read it wrong but I got the impression that some of the dead were just victims of circumstance - at least the ones in the car that went through the yellow blinking light. What did they do except be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Forgive...

a clarification... i was referring to the people in the car.

[Pharon]

Weren't there two cars involved in this accident?

[Insomniac]

Everyone in both cars was most likely drunk, although only the survivors were visibly drunk (obviously).

The ones who died were going at least twenty miles over the speed limit, and probably much more. They had the right of way to go through the yellow light, though.

The driver of the pickup might have been able to react faster if they'd been going slower or he'd been less intoxicated, but in any case, he had the equivalent of a stop sign.

[AJ]

I kinda wish more stuff like this would happen outside the bars I go to. It's alot easier to get a beer when everyone's outside. No wading through a crowd, etc.

[Aegis]

And the last was a woman who I think was otherwise healthy and okay, except that she was dead.

lulz

[zillionaire]

I loved the rock n' roll scene, and I hung out with a hard-partying bunch of people. It was amazing to me that so many of us made it out alive. Until a friend of mine, feeling sorry for himself, spent the day drinking and plowed into a crowd of people on his way home. Killed 8 of them. That was the end for me. We ran away, fast as we could.

The next year, my old crowd was being picked off like flies. The first two to go weren't totally unexpected. The first had been sick for a while, and the second... well a 6'5", 350 lb Puerto Rican who looooooooved his blow, a massive coronary wasn't that surprising, even if he was only 32. I went to four different memorials before May. Then, one of my best and oldest friends, a former lover, died in a car accident on his way to work. Then I started to lose my mind a little bit.

All I could think about was how, that day, he had gotten up, showered, brushed his teeth, got dressed, left for work.... Did he sense what was coming? My girlfriend and I went to his apartment to go through his stuff before his parents got there (we thought it was the least we could do for him to make sure his mom didn't find his porn.) The normalcy of the scene was unbearable. Dirty clothes on the bathroom floor. A roach in the ashtray. Coffee cup in the sink. His records everywhere, his mixing board, his turntables... he had been putting some finishing touches on a mix before he left.

We kept seeing signs everywhere, like if we could have interpreted them correctly, he would still be here. The message on his answering machine, the song on his myspace profile, his last words to me... in hindsight, did they have another meaning? He haunted my dreams, and the dreams of our friends, for weeks afterwards.

And the fear was paralyzing. Sean had walked out his front door to his death. What guarantee did I have that this breath, or this one, or this one, wouldn't be my last? I was terrified to let my boyfriend out of my sight. It took a serious, concentrated effort on my part to go on living, to let go of the fear. I remember laughing at his memorial, and it felt like the right thing to do. I gave a few quotes for an article in the paper (he was a fairly well-known club DJ), and I laughed and told a funny story about him.

He's been gone for 2 years now, and I really can't stop to think about it without being gripped with the fear again. I'd like to say that his death taught me a lesson about the transiency of life and to live each day to the fullest. Truthfully, it has made me face the fact that someday I and everyone I know will die. I can try to protect the ones I love, but no matter what I do the end is coming for us all. And it's really best not to think about it.

[Crack]

The last star in the universe will burn out approximately 130 Trillion years from now. When you're dead does it matter if you've lived 80 years or 130 Trillion? Either way you've suffered the same fate, the passage of time holds no bearing once the end result is achieved. Time is an illusion, modeled through the earth's cycle in the universe.

The earth is sooo inconsequential to the universe, that the entire life-span of the earth could be considered a "single unit of time" for whatever system you may invent to label what we identify as change at grand scale..

Look up at the night sky in it's entirety, notice any significant changes from moment to moment? That is the "rate of change" at the universal level. The existance of man is a neglible blink on the time-scale of the universe. Our existance will come and go, and the sky above will remain the same when "our llittle glimpse is over"


Dead is dead, and we're all doomed at the sub-atomic level....

[Rumpleforeskin]

I work at a funeral home. We laugh and make jokes about every dead motherfucker who's ever come through. I guess that's just how some people deal with it. I guess that's pretty fucked up though.

[FarEastFornicator]

Why so un-serious?

[NotAllBlack]

Im not even quoting that shit

I think your full of shit.

[Okie Medicvet]

My friend took their pulses, closed their eyes, and pronounced them dead for the record.

I just fucking hate doing that.


For some reason, I was more bothered by my other two friends disparaging the dead without knowing for certain the circumstances, but for these total strangers, I had no empathy as far as their lives as human beings. Just a random occurrence. There was blame and responsibility to go around, but they'd probably done stupid things before. They didn't have to die that night. Their time didn’t come up, they just got in a wreck, and it killed them.

I can understand that.

and in response to another post:

There's nothing absurd about death. Maybe our reactions to it. And maybe it's the absurdity of how some of us coast by life thinking our time expires when it's exactly right.

Life is both absurd and beautiful, horrific and humorous.

oh yeah, and:

All I could think about was how, that day, he had gotten up, showered, brushed his teeth, got dressed, left for work.... Did he sense what was coming? My girlfriend and I went to his apartment to go through his stuff before his parents got there (we thought it was the least we could do for him to make sure his mom didn't find his porn.) The normalcy of the scene was unbearable. Dirty clothes on the bathroom floor. A roach in the ashtray. Coffee cup in the sink. His records everywhere, his mixing board, his turntables... he had been putting some finishing touches on a mix before he left.

I am pretty sure what really sucks is being married to someone for over thirty years, and then all of a sudden you have to go through your hsbands stuff and go through probate because he didn't have any insurance and didn't leave a will either, which my mom is going through since dad died June 29th...

Thing is, I met him the day after she did, when I was 11 yrs old and still in a foster home (loooooong story), and although mom had dated guys after she divorced my father, he was the only one that I ever asked Mom if that was the one she was going to marry. And yet the last pic with all kids and my folks was taken over a decade ago, and for some fucking reason I have no idea why when everyone got together for Dad's funeral it was somehow part part paying last respects, and part family reunion.

Death is like that..just pops in your life when you least expect it..look at Monty Python's "Meaning of Life" in the lesson of death..

Oh and one last thing, before I forget..

We kept seeing signs everywhere, like if we could have interpreted them correctly, he would still be here.

Thinking too much on that can drive one batshit crazy, trust me, and get someone too terrified to leave their house most of the time. At the same time it's like telling someone not to think about the elephant in their living room....doesn't usually work for some reason.

[redsox39]

I was working in Seattle for 6 weeks last summer. I went to a sports bar (Sidelines) in Bellevue. I was playing darts with some co-workers when some guy pulls a gun out while sitting at the bar. The bar tender (who apparently knew him) tried to wrestle the gun away, but the guy ran straight outside. The bar tender hopped the bar and chase him out the door but you just heard the 'pop' and when we looked outside, the random guy was slumped against his (a?) car, he shot himself in the head and made a mess. Totally random, kinda depressing. But I get the strange humor part. We called the bar "Club Kill YourSelf" for the rest of the time we were there...its not really funny, but it was to us for some reason...

[AJ]

We need to get Claydon a ticket to Seattle and directions to that place please.

[Tar Heel]

Is it wrong that I just jerked off to this story?

[AJ]

Hey, whatever gets you off man.

[Distortion]

i wonder how many people react with sorrow and grief because they think they should feel a certain way about an incident. For example did the bartender really feel anything for the people in the accident or was she just responding the way she thought she should to that situation because she herself doesn't really understand how she feels about anothers tragedy and what real effects it has on her. So was she feeling empathy by default, and was insomniac lauphing because he actually was responding to how he truly felt insted of going to a preconceived emotion by default?

[BIG PIZZLE]

After my second year of college, I was completely unstoppable and totally uncouth about it. Bla bla I'm awesome. But back to my story... I was in some random pompous advanced class and we were supposed to have a series of debates over the true hero of "paradise lost." I didnt give a fuck because it was basically talking and I read that entire shit the weekend before. But a big chunk of our grade was going to be on our performance so it was a real big deal and so we had teams and we had to practice and this chick I was banging made some signs (really).

Anyways, my professor, who was a real dick and almost fucked me over with my grad school, said that one of the chicks on the other team got hurt and she may not be able to participate. Since I really couldnt help myself at this point in my life, I asked, "what is it, a debating injury?"

I thought it was funny at the time, a bunch of people laughed, the chick I was banging hit me in the leg and rolled her eyes, I used to enjoy making that happen.
But my dickish protestant white bread professor didnt seem to get the joke, and he said, "she got into an accident while skiing, she may be paralyzed."

This prompted the complete silence which was filled by the snap of this chick's punch to my leg. I really didnt feel that bad about my joke, I was stoked that I made it and me and this chick argued about it that night.

A couple weeks later, the injured bitch came back, looking a little frail but generally, OK. Before one class I actually started talking to her right in front of the prof and made a point to ask her if she was OK she said yeah, I asked 100%? She said yeah. I really didnt care but I wanted him to know she was ok and he was just as big an ass as I was at the time.


Around the same time, I was either at a hokey game or a basketball game and I just got a personal pan Pizza at as we were walking to our seats. So my mouth is watering, I sit down and start chowing on this thing when they decide to sing the national fucking anthem. So everybody get's up. I've got half a pizza in one hand, the other half in my lap and the other half in my mouth. I'm not standing. I'm gonna eat my pizza, the country will understand. Apparently not. Everyone started making a big deal; my cousin was being a bitch so I finished my slice and stood up.

I never could and still cant stand people that do shit just because they, “do not feel compelled to be bound my societal norms” or some less eloquent expression for being a dick for the sake of being a dick. People who say shit like that are either incapable of conducting themselves within society—not for lack of trying tho—or are not mature enough to realize the benefits of staying within the realm of acceptable conduct. People need to understand that it’s OK not to be affected by shit like car accidents or retards making out but, especially when you’re in public you must respect the solemn situation simply for the sake of smoothly moving it along. By purposefully avoiding giving the situation the respect it deserves, you are in fact exerting more effort in an ironic attempt to seem aloof because you think it’s cool.

[Okie Medicvet]

In other words, tact is not a liability. I fully agree.

[Distortion]

putting tact aside, are you still an asshole because you honestly feel nothing at the loss of another? Is everyone else actually feeling for others or just doing what they're suppose to?

[Archetype]

putting tact aside, are you still an asshole because you honestly feel nothing at the loss of another?
Tact aside? Yes. Yes you absolutely are.

[Okie Medicvet]

I can't say that, personally. Because I think that someone WANTING to feel empathy over a death or injury is just another rung in the ladder below someone who does feel that empathy. Recognizing what a reaction should be is at least not as bad as someone who doesn't give a shit at all about any of it. But that's just me.