Thursday, February 09, 2006

Go Quietly: This is a big pet peeve of mine. As pet peeves go, you're going to think this is an awfully strange one. But it really bugs me when people do this -- Anybody who attempts suicide in public.

Here's an article about somebody hanging himself in an airplane lavatory. The result, the plane had to be rerouted. Many people who were minding their own business were suddenly severely inconvenienced because some loser couldn't have ended it all three hours earlier or three hours later. And, according to the article, this type of thing has happened before.

Sure, it's a tragedy when somebody feels the need to take his or her own life. But these people should carry out that tragedy in the privacy of their own homes.

Every once in awhile the Washington, DC, subway system will be significantly delayed, all because someone decided to jump in front of one of the trains. Traffic in the area will come to a standstill because someone else jumped from an overpass.

I'm a volunteer firefighter/EMT, so I see my fair share of these incidents. People who overdose on drugs then drive onto a sidewalk and into a building. Once someone slit her own wrists, drove on the highway, then closed her eyes and let go of the wheel.

These people were not just endangering their own lives, as they planned, but they could have killed or injured many other people in their cry for attention.

The next morning after the highway call, we ran another suicide attempt. He had overdosed, and a family member found him unconscious in his room. He was breathing, and his pulse was steady, so it was a simple transport to the hospital. What was nice was, A) He was unconscious, therefore quiet and cooperative, and B) He wasn't bothering anyone else outside his immediate family, except perhaps the few people who plugged their ears as the sirens wailed by.

Suicide is never the answer. But if you think it's for you, keep it to yourself.