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I’ve written about it a number of times: A few weeks back, I posted an EMS1 column about the recent position statement by NAEMSE, NEMSMA and IAFCCP supporting an associate degree requirement for paramedics. They use the same tired old argument they’ve always used to defend their regressive attitude toward EMS; it’ll cost more money, we’ll be unable to staff trucks, we’ll have to shutter fire stations, people will die, fire, locusts, plague, dogs and cats living together… complete anarchy! If they really viewed patient care as their core mission – as it should be, if it’s 90% of their calls – they’d change the lettering on every truck to read BIG CITY EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES (and we also occasionally put out fires), and restructure budgets and command structure accordingly. They want you uneducated and cheap, because despite the fact that you handle 90% of the workload at any fire department, you’re still just an entry-level position in their eyes.

I mean, I know when a trigger is bad, but as far as appreciating a crisp break or noticing creep or stacking, it’s not really my fortè. It may not be a good trigger, but it’s my trigger, and familiarity breeds a proficiency all its own. It’s what a Smith&Wesson Performance Center revolver with a Jerry Miculek 3,000 round trigger job wants to be when it grows up. Now, such a trigger job for me is casting pearls before swine, but it also was a very nice trigger.

The folks that put on the conference are the EMS Council of New Jersey, formerly known as the New Jersey State First Aid Council. I met staffers, a great many of them with full-time jobs and professional degrees, who choose to spend the equivalent of another full-time job staffing ambulances in their community. I’ve said before that, at every EMS conference I attend or speak, invariably the most enthusiastic and engaged people in every session are the folks proudly wearing shirts with their vollie squad’s logo on it, or jumpsuits festooned with a hundred certification patches. This year’s conference had a M*A*S*H theme, and one of the guys in the costume contest was this guy, in genuine 1950’s USMC uniform.

When you eat a bite of potato salad, think of an Idaho preacher’s kid who died with a prayer on his lips, asking God to forgive him for the enemy soldiers’ lives he had taken. When you welcome your niece’s new boyfriend to the table, remember the black kid from Mississippi who died right beside his white buddies in Vietnam, though he wasn’t even allowed to eat in the same restaurants back home. When you fetch your wife another glass of tea, think of a young wife living in base housing at Fort Benning, as she hears the news that her husband died at Ia Drang. Whilst you enjoy your beer and bratwurst, remember the 19 -year-old Army private who died in a training accident in Grafenwohr in 1960, one of  many young men who knew they’d be little more than a speed bump should the Russians ever come pouring through the Fulda Gap.