Although I've been running on the ambulance a few months now, I'm not technically an Emergency Medical Technician. My former certification lapsed at some point while I lived in Senegal, and so I am forced to go back to square one to obtain it again. Fortunately, my rescue squad allows new volunteers to run under a temporary arrangement until we can get our EMT certification. Classes are offered periodically at the Fire and Rescue Training Academy (or some such official name) in Rockville.

But Rockville is a long and miserable commute from the District, as I discovered when I had to take the mandatory physical at the county health office. The appointment, essentially a formality to assure the fire & rescue authorities that I wouldn't drop dead while lifting up a fat person or washing an ambulance, became a grim expedition when a pounding thunderstorm turned irritating stop-and-go traffic into a grueling ordeal. Daily commuters may scoff, but I decided right then that nothing could possibly persuade me to take my EMT night classes in Rockville.

Fortunately, I found a private training program in DC that runs EMT classes. While I'll be certified as a real live EMT on completion of the class, I'll still be obliged to put in a 16-hour "refresher" course to make myself acceptable to Montgomery County. Perhaps the authorities in Maryland have little faith that DC will successfully train me to avoid killing patients. But the extra time is worth it, if I don't have to join the ranks of embittered commuters slogging out to Rockville two evenings a week.

The DC training program was full, but put me on a waiting list for a daytime class. One of the pleasures of running your own business is the ability to take off for the middle of the day; a disadvantage is that I'll be running sleepless for a while to make up what I miss during the 9-5. I didn't find out until Thursday morning that I'd made it off the waiting list and should come to class that day. Susan dropped me off at the small building located a few blocks from Union Station.

When I first first became an EMT in Ohio, I took night classes at a vocational school fifteen minutes from my quaint collegiate haven. The class was primarily comprised of people who wanted to volunteer at one of the many local fire and rescue stations that served the scattered rural communities. A few were from the Army Reserves or National Guard, and were looking to develop skills that might facilitate their careers. I had no real community contacts at that point, and was becoming an EMT because I thought it would help me get over my morbid fear of Emergency Rooms. (It did.) I stuck out a little -- I was the lone college boy.

My first impression of this EMS school was that, once again, there were some differences between me and my fellow students. I surmised that many in the class are seeking their EMT accreditation in order to work on one of DC's private ambulances, which provide transport services to and from hospitals for non-critical patients. For these students, this class is a career step, a professional advancement that might offer more challenge, security, or money. Meanwhile, I'm doing it so I can cover myself in glory at the all-volunteer "God Squad" in nearby burbia. I want to start working for my "aidman status," my paramilitary squad's internal certification that I can head an ambulance crew. And on the most epidermal level, I am the sole white person in the class.

But beyond that, I found the the classes were rather similar. Being an Emergency Medical Technician demands some essential knowledge, but success is more a function of how an individual applies their basic skills than how much anatomical and pharmacological factoids one has crammed into one's noggin. One of the things I most appreciate about Emergency Medicine is its fusion of the mind and body -- it is both a mental and rigorously physical trade. You have to take your knowledge and experience and use it to guide your body into action. I find it very similar to carpentry or painting in that regard.

It also means that EMT training is not exactly the most difficult subject in the book. The focus is on giving people the crucial information that they need to do the job without further damaging their patients. Doing well in the class might marginally lower your likelihood of screwing up on the job. It doesn't begin to predict whether you'll be a good EMT, because the class can't really test how well the student will respond to fear, stress, disgust, and a host of other real-world responses. So the class is suffused with an aura of unreality, a sense of wait-and-see.

"You're going to break ribs doing CPR," the instructor said at one point. An uncomfortable rustle went through the class. "Sooner or later. But if you're doing CPR to someone, basically, they're dead. What are going to do to them that's worse than being dead?" Some folks exchanged disturbed glances.

I don't really think an instructor should be programming new EMTs with the expectation that they'll be snapping the bones of their patients, but I've felt distinctly unpleasant creakings of cartilage and who-knows-what while compressing a chest or two. It is one of those sensations, like childbirth or a panic attack, that cannot adequately be described. You'll just have to try it sometime.

Who knows how many of my fellow students will spend the money and time to become an EMT, only to discover that the sensation is intolerable to them?