Adventures in CADPAT

I am signed up for a first aid course next week.  I let my certification lapse last year when I discovered that BC charges over $200 to sit in a stuffy church basement filled with unsold boxes of fundraising fudge for the privilege of dressing up a total stranger like a gauze S&M fetishist.  I can get that for $15 on any Toronto street corner.

So instead I am letting the Department of National Defense re-certify my ability to hog-tie a burn victim.   This is one of the perks of being a DND civilian staff member.  I am afforded some wonderful training opportunities by highly qualified staff who's knowledge of the course material is out shadowed only by their ability to turn even the most mundane moment in time into a magical ride on pixie dusted wings.  

Case in point being the fine gentleman who handed me my advanced copy of the course manual the other day.  It was not the St John Ambulance colour, glossy, fully updated manual I was expecting.   This one weighed a metric tonne, was dated 2006, looked like a phone directory and had the words "Military First Aid" emblazoned across the front in a no-nonsense brooking font.  Tanks and guns and seriously doodled cartoon members of each branch the Canadian Forces lined the pages.  This looked serious.  I was worried I may have inadvertently signed myself up for something far out of my league.

When I asked the gentleman what I, as a civilian, will see as the biggest difference between the First Aid courses I had taken in the past and this "Military First Aid" he stopped, thought very seriously for a moment or two and replied "Everyone will be in uniform ma'am." 

You see?  MAGICAL.