So Much Blood

As promised in my previous post, here is a story from the last time I asmed.  And in case the title isn't a warning, this post considers mention of things that may make squeamish people...well, squeamish.

We had a high schooler on the crew along with us college students.  He was a really sweet kid, competent, learned quickly.  In the play, we had a fight scene that involved thick wooden dowels, and despite how many times we had warned the two actors, they kept hitting too hard and breaking the dowels.

We were in between fight call and house opening on opening night and one of the dowels had cracked, so we had to remove the tassel from the old dowel and put it on the new dowel.  It was stuck on there really thoroughly and I had things to do, so I gave the high school kid, Nate, my unused (very sharp) knife and told him what to do.  I was working on taping an actor's ankle (she had sprained it (we had a lot of injuries because the show was very physically intensive)) and Nate came up to me and said, "Kaylee, I'm bleeding."  I told him I would get him a bandage in half a second as soon as finished.  He told me that would be fine and I finished up and grabbed my first aid kit.

I turned to Nate.  He was standing in front of the sink holding a finger that was gushing blood.  I remember my eyes widening. "Oh.  You're BLEEDING." I said and grabbed bandage and frantically unwrapped it.

"Kaylee, it's hurts."  Nate said.  "It hurts so much."

"It'll be okay.  Here, I have a bandaid." And I wrapped the bandaid around his finger and heard him sigh in relief, but I immediately realized it wouldn't be enough.  I started unwrapping another bandaid while I got on headset (thank god we had wireless) and let my sm know about what was happening.  She immediately took care of keeping the actors and crew out of the way so they wouldn't panic.

"Beth, go get George (our technical director)."  I told the stage manager, knowing that he was still hanging around since it was opening night.  I got the other bandage on Nate's finger and realized he had no color in his skin at all.  The other asm hung around, not knowing what to do.  "Get orange juice (which I had bought for my sm as a joke for opening), it's back by the booth"  I told her, realizing that he was going into shock

"Nate, it's okay.  I'm going to wrap your finger in gauze, I told him."  He nodded and I started wrapping his finger, the old bandage sliding everywhere, totally soaked through with blood.  Suddenly his eyes rolled back in his head.  My technical director came running and we caught him as he fainted and eased him down to the ground.  In retrospect, we should have gotten him sitting so much sooner, but I was so caught up in trying not to panic and trying to get the bleeding to stop.  His eyes fluttered open and George and I both breathed a breath of relief.

We finished wrapping Nate's finger in gauze and George told our director (who was still  around) to call 911 and tell them that we needed the paramedics.  He immediately got on the phone with him.

"Where the fuck are the rubber gloves?" George asked angrily, rifling through the first aid kit provided by the theatre.

"Here," I said, grabbing a pair for myself and a him from my own kit.  I should have put on rubber gloves sooner, but what I realized in this incident?  That all of the safety precautions that you're warned about are very important, but preventing a person from bleeding out immediately is more important.

In the meantime, Beth and I were explaining to George what had happened and one of our actresses comes up to check her props (as she was supposed to do).  She froze, her eyes wide open, her mouth agape slightly.  I looked at Beth and then back at the actor.  "Rebecca, go back to the dressing rooms and don't let anyone come up, okay?"  I told her and followed her down to the dressing rooms (which were down a level).

"I can help, I have first aid training," Rebecca offered.

I took a deep breath.  "No, thank you though.  We have it under control and we need you to focus on acting.  What I need you to do is keep anyone from going upstairs, okay?"  She nodded and I made the announcement that we were running behind and that everyone would need to stay down in the dressing rooms until we told them otherwise and that they could check their props then.  I think there must have been something about my tone because all I got was nods from our cast and not one of them budged in the succeeding time, an impressive feat with a cast of 30+ college students.

When I got back upstairs Beth called to me.  "Kaylee, go tell the house manager a simplified version of what's happened and tell them that we'll need to hold house."

I walked to the front of the house.  "We'll need to hold house.  One of the technicians has had an accident.  I want you to know that the paramedics will being coming, so please keep the audience calm."

I vividly remembering the house manager gulping and nodding her head.  I headed back to backstage and the director was looking for me.  "Kaylee, do you know anything about Nate's personal information and background?"  I nodded and gave him everything I knew.  "I'll need to call his mother," my director told me and I got his mother's number from a very shaky Nate.

By this time, the paramedics had arrived, and they of course entered through the lobby and the house, causing a big stir from our audience members.  They looked at Nate and told us to get a blanket and more orange juice and that he was in shock.  I knew where a blanket lived in the dressing rooms, so I grabbed it, needing all my will to move normally in front of the actors.

The paramedics draped Nate in the blanket and told us that he was actually fairly stable.  Our efforts with the gauze had stopped the bleeding.  They asked when his mother would be here and we told them she would be here momentarily.  George designated someone to go out and watch for Nate's mother, and then the paramedics informed us that if we wanted, Nate would be allowed to drive with his mother to the hospital where he would get stitches.  Nate said that he really would prefer to go with his mother than they nodded and said that they would be going and left us with instructions about how to look after him.

The paramedics left and we got Nate into a sitting position in a chair, which was significantly more comfortable than the cold concrete ground.  His mother came and a few of people helped him walk out to the car.  I looked down a my gloved hands, the latex (need to get nonlatex gloves) was speckled with blood and I asked Beth for a bag, took my gloves off the way they taught me in first aid, put them in the bag, and dumped it in a trash can.  George did similarly and then he hugged me.  This very tough, gruff, tactless man hugged me and he was shaking.  Shaking as hard as I was.  "I have EMT training and I hate experiences like that, I hate them so much.  They just make me shake."  He said.

I agreed fervently.  "George?"  I asked.  "Should I not have given him the knife?"

"No, you did what you were supposed to.  He was part of your crew, they should be able to handle knives. Things like this can happen to anyone."  He assured me, and I let out a breath I had been holding.

One of the crew had mopped up the blood and Beth asked me to let the house manager know that she could open the house.  We opened only five minutes late.  The whole thing had only taken twenty minutes.  After I talked to the house manager, I looked down at my hands and ran to the restroom, letting warm, soapy water wash over them, washing the blood from the experience away.  I went back to the theatre, we made adjustments to the scene changes so we could do them without Nate and the show went flawlessly.

Nate came back two days later with a heavily bandaged thumb, but did his work as usual.  We filled out an incident report and things went back to normal.  At the end of the run, when his bandaging was significantly less, he showed us the slice he had made.  He had almost taken off the pad of thumb and managed to do it in a way that they couldn't even stitch it up.

And you know what?  To this day only two of our actors know what happened to Nate that opening night.  One was Rebecca and the other had been texted by nervous friends in the audience about the paramedics.  Luckily she had the sense not to say anything to anyone other than stage management.

Note: I am shaking just writing about what happened that day.

ASM

I am assistant stage manager (asm) for the show I'm working for, and though it's not a head stage management job, it's still a position I enjoy immensely.  It's less stressful at times (though definitely not all the time) and I don't always have to make the decisions.  One of the problems I have with asming though is that I never know how much of a prompt book to put together.  I need a script certainly, and I have taken back up blocking notes before, but do I need to print all the rehearsal reports and design paperwork?  Generally the answer is that I don't need to have all the rehearsal reports in my binder, but I do need to have essentials such as a contact sheet, schedule, and character breakdown (which lists which characters are on which page).  It's sort of a silly thing to worry about, but it's something that's always struck me. (This post reminds me that I should probably do a post on prompt books at some point, even if most of my readers don't really care).

Now, two quick stories about the last time I was an asm (anyways I hope I can tell them quickly):

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During tech, we had been sitting in a cue for around thirty minutes (our lighting designer was horribly slow at writing cues) and finally we were going to run the transition into the next scene.  Well, we had a seventeen foot tree that was engageable (ie we had an actress up in it) and it was sitting offstage as far as we could get it.  We also had a scrim (a type of drop (piece of fabric) that covers the entire stage and that lighting can do some cool things with) which was right next to the tree and for the transition the scrim was going to fly out and the tree was going to go in (I was in charge of moving the tree).

Katie, one of the actresses, was being very patient and had just been waiting quietly in position up in the tree.  Well, as we started the transition, our incompetent fly rail operator (the person who moved the scrim in and out) flew the scrim the wrong way.  The stage manager yelled: "Stop" but I'm not sure that it registered with the fly rail operator.  There was a deafening crack and a scream from Katie.  The fly rail operator had flown the scrim further in, rather than out, and the pipe that the scrim was hanging on (which was only about five feet above the tree to begin with).  

I  immediately scrambled up the ladder for the tree, calling to Katie.  She didn't respond, which caused my heart to stop beating for just a second.  I got to the top of the tree and found a quietly sobbing Katie cradling her hand.  I asked her if she was hurt anywhere other than her hand and she shook her head no.  I asked her if she thought she could get down right then and she shook her head no again, so I told her to hold tight and I would get her an ace wrap and ice.  I climbed down the ladder as fast as I could and nearly slammed into my technical director.  I explained very briefly what had happened and asked him to talk to her while I grabbed an ice pack and ace wrap from my kit.  I did so and climbed up the ladder again and wrapped the ice pack onto her hand.

At that point, I finally felt safe enough (ie Katie was secure enough) explaining to my stage manager what had happened.  She was horrified, but also had to deal with the fly rail op.  After I finished explaining (I was still sitting in the tree next to Katie, making sure she was okay) the head of the design program showed up and demanded of me why was Katie still up in the tree.  I told him that she didn't feel safe climbing down and he demanded that she come down.  I looked at her and she nodded that she could, so I helped her climb down one handed and we got her seated in the dressing rooms.  We kept her hand wrapped, iced it off and on, and had her mother (who was a nurse) see look it over.  As it turned out, she had only sprained her hand, but it was incredibly scary.

After this whole ordeal the head of design talked to both me and the other asm (separately).  He told us that we should have been watching the fly rail op (despite the fact that I was on the other side of the stage and that the other asm had also been in the middle of a complicated scene change).  He said it was also Katie's fault for not crying out and I defended, saying that she had. He blamed her for being in the tree when she didn't need to be, which was bullshit, since she had done exactly what we asked of all the actors: be in positions one cue early.  The person he blamed least? The fly rail op.  And yes, stage managers are responsible for pretty much everything, but in this case we just weren't.  He told us that we hadn't handled the situation properly since we hadn't informed him immediately.  And I rarely rarely disagreed with a teacher to their face but told him in no uncertain terms that getting to Katie who was 17' in the air had been my first priority and I would not ever apologize for doing that, especially since I have significantly more first aid training that he does.  Surprisingly, he actually backed off and apologized to me.

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I know I promised you two stories, but this post is already long enough, so I will post the second one separately.

Open

I'm not sure I want to be blogging about this subject.  I have permission from Boyfriend, who is involved with what I want to discuss, but I don't want to get judged.  I've never been afraid of being judged, not even when I was a little kid, so this is very strange for me.  The hardest thing for me?  Not telling the entire internet, but telling the people I know in person who I know read my blog.

So now that I've built it up to be this huge deal, I suppose I should actually talk about what I'm thinking about.  Boyfriend and I are currently living in different cities (far enough away that it's not easy to visit him necessarily). And I've had a couple people tell me it would be good for our relationship, which I only sort of agree with.  But one thing living away from him has done is give me more free time.

I read a lot more blogs on feminism, gender, sexuality, and political issues in general now.  I've learned more that I could possibly quantify over the past few months and what I've learned has changed my world view quite a lot.  Couple that with the fact that I'm dealing with my anger management issues now and I feel like a fairly different person.  One who is distinctly me in many ways, but one whose view of the world is profoundly different.

Senior year of high school (which is when I consider my life really starting to change) I believe that monogamous relationships are the only valid ones.  And that for me, the only relationship I wanted was a heterosexual one.  And even now, I will still admit that primarily am attracted to men.  I will give this to my past self, I didn't say: "I'm not attracted to women", but I did say: "I haven't been attracted to a women in my experience."  Years later, I have been attracted to women, so that's one part of the equation that's changed.

So, if one part of my romance equation wasn't true, it probably stands to reason the other wasn't.  Even a few months ago, I talk about how polyamory wasn't for me.  And the more time that has passed, the more I realized I hadn't really ever legitimately considered the option.  For quite awhile, I was hesitant to even talk to Boyfriend about what I was thinking about.  I finally got to mentioning it occasionally and we had a few brief chats.

A few days ago I finally talked with Boyfriend about the possibility of pursuing an open relationship.  I felt so much dread I was shaking and there was just no reason because he agreed that it was something that he would like to try.  The thing is, I don't want to go out an have casual sex with strangers. That really wasn't the point.  But a friends with benefits situation or even another relationship with another person interests me and is something that I would like to have as an option.

I haven't told very many people about this but I've already been forced to justify myself.  Yes I love Boyfriend.  Yes, our relationship is actually wonderful right now.  No, the reason isn't: "He's not enough for me."  What brought this on?  The belief that I honestly am not convinced that people are designed to be monogamous.  Do Boyfriend and I have limits/boundaries/ground rules about it? Yes, we've agreed to talk to each other about any relationship we may or may not start. (Note: Some of these were totally legitimate questions asked out of curiosity and not out of judgement.  But I find myself being very defensive, overly defensive even).

I don't like be judged.  I really don't.  But this is something that I would like to explore.

A New Sports Paradigm

I grew up playing sports.  I played soccer and I played volleyball for the vast majority of my pre-college years. One of the things that became utterly ingrained in my mind was that men and women perform separately in sports because they are so completely different.  And the thing is, to some extent it's true.  Women sprinter's records are slower then men sprinter's.  The same thing holds true for swimming and various other sports.

But then I think about it and a lot of sports, soccer and volleyball included, don't necessarily hold much/any advantage for men over women.  The men I've played volleyball with recreationally do tend to hit harder than many of the women but because of they do have that strength that many times they don't have to work as hard for (generally), their blocking is sloppy, their accuracy is poor, and their vision of the court is worse.  This isn't the case for everyone, but most of the women players I've played with tend to be smarter about how they play the ball.  This of course isn't because women are inherently smarter, it has everything to do with how women are trained.  Less of them can just power the ball and blow people over, so coaches teach proper blocking and  vision of the court to find holes.  However, I would like to say that I have seen girls I was playing with whose noses just became faucets from getting hit in the nose my women hitters.

There are also positions in volleyball that favor women, who tend to be shorter (although on the whole volleyball is a sport for tall people).  The defensive specialist and libero specialists require agility, mobility, and being low to the ground.  So, there's a position that shorter people would excel at.

As for soccer, and there are a lot of other sports that I know less about that I could also use as an example, Shea is currently training with boys and she scores just as many goals when she plays with them as when she plays when her own team.  The boys are fairly astonished by this, she just takes it as how it should be.

I'm not claiming that all sports should be integrated.  As much as I hate to admit it, women are generally shorter and lighter (less muscle mass in particular) and men are generally taller with more muscle mass.  And I do think that having gender neutral sprinting would be fairly devastating to women sprinters and then would you make every race be 50% women?  It doesn't really work.  There's a lot of problems with how sports are set up in general right now and it's certainly not an easy fix, but it is interesting to think about.

This entire page is very very good, but the section on  "Gender and Sports" is relevant.  Check out the one on ski jumping in particular.

Torchwood

Firstly, this post contains major spoilers for Torchwood, particularly Children of Earth (but not Miracle Day).  It also contains very minor spoilers about Joss Whedon's works and Doctor Who.  The rest of the post is after the breal.

Note:  If you are going to give spoilers in any comments you make, please do so with an easy to see spoiler tag at the beginning of your comment.  Also, if you are reading using "View Post" as opposed to "View Blog" their will not be a jump break, so beware (stupid Blogger).

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Psychology

I have a grudge against psychology.  I am biased against it by my experiences and I would like to put that disclaimer up front.  I have debated this several times with Boyfriend and I will admit before I start with what I find objectionable that: 

1) Psychology is a valid science 

2) Psychology can give us valuable insights into the human mind 

3) Counselors can genuinely help people

Now.  Psychology's approach is what I have a problem with frequently.  People are all different, so making generalizations is very very dangerous.  Many psychological studies have flaws in their methods which will lead to flawed or incomplete conclusions.  This is particularly true in regard to the field of gender.

Boyfriend's biggest (valid) criticism of my view of psychology is when I read studies about how women and men are inherently and biologically different (battle of the sexes and so on) and my first, immediate reaction is denial.  I honestly do believe that studies like this have some flaws.  Frequently inconclusive results are taken (generally by the media) as something very conclusive, and it drives me crazy.  I also am loathe to admit that there are biological differences between men and women (beyond basic anatomy).  And the reason I am loathe to admit it is that any slight difference is going to be used as an excuse for blatant sexism.

There probably are biological differences, but how are you ever going to be able to prove that they're biological and not societal?  How are you going to prove to what extent they're biological and to what extent they're societal?

Also, while I do believe counselors can be a lot of help, I've also seen them do a lot of damage to people I know personally.  I object to the belief that everyone should be "normal" because so often "normal" implies homogeneity and I like to celebrate our differences.  And I know, I really do, that not all of psychology conflicts/conforms to what I've said, but I've ran into a lot of times when it does. 

Sex Ed

An exploration of my sexual education in private, public, catholic, small, large, Protestant, and Catholic schools (I switched schools a fair deal).

My first large, public school I attended from ages 5-7.  Unsurprisingly, I was told exactly nothing about sex or even about reproduction.  I can remember my parents talking about it briefly, but not much was said in general. The biggest thing I remember being told is that even though my parents lived together before they were married that generally was considered bad and not desirable.

From ages 8-11, I attended a small, Protestant, private school.  There was no sex education my first two years there, but when I was 10 and 11, I remember them having an optional class to be attended with parents.  I naturally skipped this, because I was embarrassed that I would have to attend with my mom and/or dad.  I remember hearing stories from friends about how they just talked about anatomy and how sex was just for reproduction.

In junior high, I was still at a small (though slightly larger), Protestant, private school.  And this was I think the most sexual education I got throughout my schooling.  We spent three days both years entirely devoted to sex ed.  The entire school stopped and we attended various classes on various subjects, and for the most part, we got to pick what topics we attended (though some were required).

I remember the one on STDs fairly vividly because we did the glitter exercise (the one where a few people get glitter on their hands and then go out and shake everyone's hand and the glitter transfers).  We also saw fairly horrifying pictures (as seems to be standard in sex ed).  However, and I honestly had forgotten this until I set out to write this post, we did talk about condoms.  This was the only time that sex was spoken of as something that you would want to have and they very specifically told us to always use condoms: even if we didn't want to, even if it didn't feel as good, we were always supposed to use condoms.  This was all very well and good, but they never actually explained what a condom was or how it was used, which I why I forgot I had even learned about them.  I will note though that they never mentioned any other form of protection.

Some of the other classes were actually fairly interesting.  The one on relationships was really actually helpful and surprisingly said: dating (they weren't willing to go as far as saying sleeping) around is fine and a valid choice and we should not judge people who did it.  That was the only time I was ever told that advice.  However some of the classes, like the one on nutrition specifically for women, was mostly bullshit enforcing media's view of women.  Overall though, the classes on eating disorders, all the classes on relationships, and the ones about puberty were genuinely useful and addressed many common myths (though the one on puberty was less than useful since I started puberty at 8 and got my period at 9, and was essentially done with it by the time I got to junior high).

Both years, the whole segment culminated in a school wide assembly about abstinence.  For extremely conservative people I am actually retrospectively impressed with a lot of the things they told us, but it was really unsurprising that it ended in preaching abstinence only.  And then they publicly asked us to raise our hands if we were going to commit to no sex before marriage (I mean our eyes were supposed to be closed, but still).  I raised my hand, oh how naive I was.

Really quickly before moving on, at that school we were also required to take quarter long classes in Media and Relationships, which were absolutely fascinating, because they looked into media and relationship stereotypes and looked pretty deeply into teen/non-married relationships and the conclusions we came to (such as, it's okay to date around) were fairly impressive for such an incredibly conservative school.

My freshman and sophomore years of high school, I went to a medium sized, private, Catholic prep school. It was a very interesting atmosphere, one I hated very thoroughly because their goal was to make me question everything I thought, which frustrated me severely.  Again, in retrospect, I'm really glad that they did teach me this, otherwise I wouldn't have learned till much later.  But, anyway, in regard to sex ed, the only thing we had was a segment in health class sophomore year.  They did the standard anatomy, STDs, and made us watch a live birth and then called it a day.

After sophomore year, I transferred to a large, public high school for my junior and senior years.  We did a small (very small) unit on sex ed in Homeroom.  Junior year, we learning how to put a condom on a banana. And as silly as the lesson was (there was lots of joking), it was the first time I had even actually seen a condom (okay...I guess the used ones we had to clean up after football games probably count...probably).  Our senior year, we did a very stupid, horribly outdated, and incorrect small unit on STIs (it was the first time I had heard them called STIs and at the time was such a joke that I still call them STDs).  That unit was literally the joke of the school for a week afterwards.

This post is already quite long, but I briefly want to touch on the Psychology of Gender class I took with Boyfriend in college.  I'm not a fan of how psychology is applied to many different situations and I believe that the field is years, possibly decades, behind in the areas of gender and disorders.  But, my grudge (because I will admit it is exactly that) against psychology can wait for a different post.  What my biggest problem with the class was that every single thing was taught as fact.  We were taught g-spot/vaginal orgasms don't exist, and thus women don't really enjoy penetration.  Excuse me?  I could you give you directions to find my g-spot.  It's really not that hard, and while penetration is not actually my favorite part of sex, it still feels good.  And no, maybe it doesn't for everyone, and a lot of women's g-spots aren't at all sensitive or even make them uncomfortable or in pain, that very thoroughly doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  We were also taught for weeks and weeks about Freud, who has mostly been disproved in regards to his sexual theories.  It was possibly the most frustrating class I've ever been in.