Life and Love and Why?

Well this post has nothing to do with love. And why is way beyond the scope of my blog, or at least this post. But just calling this post "life" would be a bit boring and I like a song by this name by Switchfoot. So "Life and Love and Why" it is.

Anyway, I'll start with today and then go back to yesterday. I started my Thursday like I do most Thursdays: woke up at the ungodly hour of 5:45, which means actually getting out of bed at 6, so I could catch a bus fro 630. Caught the bus and went to my base. I then did my usual "Thursday morning manual labor with the NCO ass". (It's so important to me it has it's own name) Now I got out of it at the beginning but then had to come back and help. They were gonna let me go cause they decided they didn't need my help but then decided to make me paint the dining hall wall white. I'll take "things that are already white" for 500 Alex. Yup, I painted a white wall white. It wasn't even like "paint an 'eggshell white' wall 'snow white'. This was a perfectly good white wall that I simply repainted white. The wall didn't even have any spots on it. So then as I'm leaving afterwards, I decided to shine my boots cause the now had paint on them (not the best painter in the world). As I'm finishing up with my boots the NCO asks me to give him a hand for a minute. So being the nice Canadian that I am, I said sure. BIG MISTAKE. About an hour later I finished, having helped move two giant industrial ovens and with a giant bruise on my hand. One of the guys who was helping must have been hungry cause he decided to make a sandwich out of the wall, my hand and the oven bursting all the blood vessels in a 1cm X 2cm area on the side of my hand. It looked like I tried, unsuccessfully, to Karate chop a board in two. WAX ON WAX OFF! Several people tried to send me to the infirmary, but being the tough guy that I am (laugh) I said that was unnecessary. It actually looks a lot better now. It's about half the size and has turned from a dark reddish-purple to a light pinkish-brown. But what do I know, I'm color blind. Speaking of color blindness, the other night I passed Katz a green candy and said "here, have a red candy". I haven't screwed up that badly in a while!

But enough of my ADD ranting.

Let me tell you about yesterday. Yesterday was interesting. I'll start from the end and work my way backwards. We had this lecture thing on safety. This woman came to talk to us. She told us the story of how her son was killed in a training exercise because people where careless. It was quite sad and meaningful. I'm really glad that I went (not that I had a choice).

Earlier in the day when I was heading to base I looked around on the bus and realized how interesting of a study you could do on people's behavior just by sitting on the bus and watching other people. You got one girl who's putting on fishnet stockings to your right. The crazy drunk Russian in front of you keeps yelling at random things in Russian. The guys to left of you stinks of BO and keeps leaning towards you as if he's going to pass out make your green uniform a lighter shade. You got the people studying, the people sleeping (I'm usually one of them), the people listening to music (one of them too) and the people talking to the person next to them (or their cellphone-more likely). It's really quite interesting to watch!

What got me watching other people so intensely? Well, I was switching buses just a few minutes before and a thought-provoking situation occurred. As I was walking to the bus stop, not really paying attention to where I was walking, I almost tripped over a pile of rags with really horrible smell. I then realized that this pungent pile of rags was actually a person. There was a man passed out in a pile of his own feces on a few newspapers covered in a few rags. A lot of emotions and thoughts ran through my head. The first was,"God that stinks!" Then I think it was "Yuk that's really gross". Then it was "is that guy ok? Is he dead?" The thought really crossed my mind. He wasn't moving at all. I then sat there for a few minutes try to decide what to do. Do I call someone? There were lots of people around (including security guard and transit police) and no one seemed be having the same dilemma as I was. Most people seemed to just have my first reaction of "That stinks", many not realizing that there was actually a human being on the ground. Some just kinda stepped over him. A couple people threw some coins at his feet. Then the guy stirred and got up. That was a bit of a relief. He started asking people for cigarettes and he looked like he was suffering from withdrawal symptoms from something. He was very shaky and quite out of it. A few minutes later an ambulance arrived and asked if the guy was ok. He said he was (although I'm not so sure) and they left. My bus came and I couldn't get this guy out of my head. Should I have tried to help him somehow? How insensitive have people become to just step over someone laying on the ground? What insensitive have I become?

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. It was just a weird day overall, with some weird situations. But I guess that's life.