AlaWyrm

I agree with everything you listed, but have to mention that those rules are not always fool proof. A story I rarely share is saving a competitive open water swimmer from drowning. She was training with a friend a couple of days after a competition on lake Michigan and had a panic attack. She went under several times. Her friend was at the other end of what used to be a gravel pit and didn't know she was struggling. My daughter got my attention (she is the real hero of this story) and I jumped in (and lost my glasses I had just bought. Thankfully my eye doctor heard of the event and gave me a new pair for free) and pulled her to the other side. 911 was called because she had inhaled a bunch of water and she thanked me for saving her. I said, "don't thank me, thank the company that made that orange inflatable thing that you activated or else I never would have had the time to get to you before you ended up at the bottom of this pit. I was smoking a cigarette when my daughter was yelling that someone needed help. I used to be a strong swimmer but was out of shape. After I unzipped her wetsuit (she asked me to) so she could breath better and was pulling her to shore I was thinking, "fuck, we are both going to die now". I was struggling to pull her up on shore enough to keep her face out of the water because we were both so exhausted. I have no idea what happened to her after that, but I hope she didn't get pneumonia or something from all the water I could hear in her lungs. I went home and slept for hours after the adrenaline wore off.

I was in a meeting listening to our CEO on speaker phone during an investor call. Mid call my boss asked me, "Alawyrm, what are you doing? Taking notes? Why?". I said "Nope, I'm just keeping track of every time he says 'uh' between words". After the first few minutes it was all I could hear. I became hyper focused on it because I remembered my highschool speech and debate teacher drilling it out of us. I almost filled a piece of paper with tally marks by the end of the call. That guy could have benefitted from your services.

They weren't bothered, they were just amused. None of us really cared about the call. She started cracking up when I told her what I was doing. Then she said, "Great. Now I can't not hear it either".

Isn't that a bit like quiting as a brain surgeon to go to med school?

They would have to be diesel powered though.