Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Dumb Dummies

First, let me announce that my hubby has returned safely from military duty and you'll be glad to know that the war in Mississippi has been won.  LOL!

They were "playing" a war game to practice their jobs in the event of an actual war.  This wasn't just a game, though.  This was a "pre-test" for the actual war game coming up next year when they will be graded on their work.

They all performed superbly except for the dumb dummies who wreaked utter havoc upon their performance.

I should explain a bit here.  My husband is in an Air Force medical unit.  Their job is to evacuate wounded troops.  They are a ground unit who pass off the patients to an air unit who then transport the patients on to the next hospital in the chain.

Sometimes they use real live volunteers as wounded patients like the time the scouts and my family volunteered here:

At other times, they use dummies like this one:

They are big, heavy and cumbersome.  They're good for practice and don't complain but they don't help much either.  Yet, we'll get to that in a minute.

So, an important part of my husband's unit's work is to load and unload the patients onto and off of aircraft, buses, ambulances, etc.  It's actually a complicated process that usually requires four people for each patient.  This is to ensure the safety of the patient and to reduce the possibility of injury to the litter bearers as some of the patients can weigh close to 300 pounds and then add all the medical equipment and it gets even heavier.  Sometimes, on rare occasions, they can ask the patients to self-load.  This means they ask the patient to get up and walk on the plane.

On top of all the regulations for carrying the patients, there are special procedures for loading patients onto the different kinds of aircraft.  For some planes, they can just walk up a big ramp while others take longer because they have to use a special forklift and can only load a couple patients at a time.  Then each plane has to be configured in a certain way to ensure the safety of the patients and the correct balance of the aircraft.  If the plane isn't configured properly, the patients cannot be loaded at all.

Okay, back to the dumb dummies:

My hubby was working in the command center with about 20 other officers.  He was in charge of the loading of the patients onto a plane without a ramp and things weren't going so well.  The mission was about to be delayed and a higher ranking officer was angry.  He started speaking rather loudly at my husband at which point all eyes in the room were watching this conversation.  The officer, who was still upset, demanded to know why my husband had not ordered the patients to self-load onto the aircraft so that the process would go faster.

My husband took a deep breath and calmly explained, "Sir, I could have ordered the patients to get up and self-load onto the aircraft but it wouldn't have done any good.  Sir, they are dummies."

News of this spread like wildfire and from there on out, everything that went wrong in the exercise was blamed on the dumb dummies.  They even caught the blame for the bad food in the mess hall and for protesting for equal rights outside the gate.  The fire department was practicing evacuating a building that was "on fire" and got everyone out safely except for the dumb dummies who just laid there.  The military police missed capturing a robber because the dumb dummy wouldn't jump up and tackle the crook.  Those dumb dummies!  For the next exercise, they are going to order smarter dummies.

Until next time, Happy Creative Time!

5 comments:

Anna said...

Oh my stars how funny!!!

Elizabeth said...

ROFLOL to be a fly on your husbands shoulder when he told the officer that...way to funny.

Anonymous said...

TOOOOOO FUNNY. gina

TonyaKaye said...

Thanks for the great laugh .. Sometimes I think I am that dumb dummy!

Trisha said...

Hilarious story! Makes me think of some of the zany old movies my dad used to watch! Thanks for sharing this one!