P=Park
The beauty of being a 4th year medical student is you get to pick your rotations. I always heard I should pick things I'm interested in, but not necessarily going to do for the rest of my life. That being said, I arranged to spend a month at the chief medical examiner's office. They handle probably 2/3 of the state's deaths. They autopsy mostly homicides and unexplained deaths, but they also document injuries from traumatic accidents.This office is amazing, and they could not have picked a more cohesive group of people to work together. I look forward to going in everyday, not just because the autopsies are interesting but because everyone there is so funny! If you think about it for a minute, it's good that they have humor. Dealing with death every single day is difficult, and the deaths they deal with are bad deaths.
So today I went into the morgue waiting for the next case to start when I heard an announcement over the intercom about a black camry in the parking lot. That was my car they were talking about but I didn't hear the whole message. I asked the chief ME who was standing next to me, what was said and he started laughing and told me that my car rolled backwards and hit another car in the parking lot. Knowing that the place is notorious for playing pranks on "newbies" I thought it was a joke, but figured it was worth checking on just in case. Well, I walked outside and there's my car, sitting in the middle of the parking lot having just rolled backwards and hit the official ME's car that the pathologists' drive to go to court. I felt so bad. I guess I wasn't paying attention and put my car in neutral instead of park. Everybody was really nice about it, and to my surprise, thought it was funny. Maybe they were laughing out of relief that their own car didn't get hit. At any rate, I was told not to worry about it because that car has so many dents in it that mine doesn't matter. It is apparently the target of a lot of abuse. I do have a new nickname now. It's "Crash". Everybody gave me hell all afternoon about it, which I went along with. It's the least I could do since they won't let me pay them for the damage. My one saving grace was that a new guy fainted during one of the autopsies this morning, which took some of the teasing away from me. Thinking it's all blown over, I walked out to my car at the end of the day, only to find a typed note taped to my windshield that said:
P=Park
R=Reverse
N=Neutral
D=Drive
L1=you don't need it
L2=you really don't need it
Parking break is what it's called, not an emergency brake.
Either way, you need to use it because both apply to you.
Have a nice day!!
All I can say is those state employees have WAY too much time on their hands!! I left the ringleader of that message a note on his computer informing him of this. He will find tomorrow. I'm just glad the white paint left on my car wipes off easy. My good ol' camry with 160,000 miles on it lives on!
posted by Kate @ 8:19 PM
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