In life people come and go, but in the paramedic field I have made some true friends that remain in contact even now, so many years later. One of those friends is my eccentric sidekick and roommate from the past, Placide. Those of you that know me have heard of his many tales, and I am here to tell you they are all true. Placide’s great virtue is his inability to lie, which probably is the single quality which has helped him navigate the dangerous waters he has chosen to cross.

When you first meet Placide, the waters are usually calm, his demeanor is disarming and welcoming, and life is generally good, with much food and drink around. He reminds me, at first meeting, of Orr from Catch-22.  Orr cultivated boredom and turned it into suspense with just mere suggestions. He crash-landed at the end of every combat mission he flew. Everyone thought it was just nerves, wartime demands kept him in the cockpit, but the crash landings were practice for an eventual escape from the war into Sweden.

Placide’s adventures have been varied and different. As I traveled to Seattle for a wedding, Placide was to join us at Seattle International and we would travel into the mountains together. Now, just to let you know, with a turban and an accent Placide resembles, very closely, Bin Laden. Now this trip was shortly after 9/11. Placide had his Visa stolen while in Vietnam, then had one re-issued right before his departure. So here is a guy who looks like the #1 terrorist the U.S. is after, with TWO stamps in his new Visa originating from an ASIAN country, and he walks right through security without so much as a glance from the officers. Meanwhile, grandmothers are being anally searched against the wall as we make it to the vehicle rental place.

That is just the way life operates when Placide is around. Misadventures and grand escapades abound, but they never originate from him. He is the opposite of Don Quixote, instead of searching for windmills to fight, the windmills come to him.

He has now settled down with a lovely wife, somewhere near the Black Sea in the Ukraine. He was working as a medic offshore but is now employed in a different capacity. And when he sent me his new job posting, I nearly collapsed. Because now my dear friend, who is challenged when it comes to operating motor vehicles of any type, will be teaching English. And his first class is going to be teaching Air Traffic controllers. 

Now, there is no doubt he has command of the language. But as a medic, driving the ambulance, Placide was navigationally challenged, to put it kindly. Couple that with some rather bizarre decisions when faced with objects such as canals, bridge abutments, other vehicles (moving or stationary), and you get a very disturbing image of the compass which guides his physical movements. I am sure that Placide has wrecked more ambulances that any three other medics I ever worked with. The incident reports after each crash were interesting reading, if not litigious fodder.

So my concern is not his teaching of the language. It’s the choice of prepositions and directional terminology he is going to instill into his new students. Across, above, below, around, these are ambiguous terms when not tied to physical points of reference. And Placide, I know you are reading this. I know I neither offend or misrepresent, and you are sitting there on that slow-ass dial-up connection you’ve pilfered from some local phone line with a huge grin in your face and a local beer condensing on the mouse pad. Take a sip for me. I’m on the wagon, at least ‘till Jazz Fest.

So if, in the coming years, we get reports of interesting aerial maneuvers from Asiana Airlines aircraft, or plights of passengers stranded on discarded runways in the Siberian wilderness, we may know the culprit. But I also know that by the time the authorities arrive, the village/city/brothel/warehouse that Placide occupies will be well-guarded by gregarious neighbors who will let no harm come to my friend. As the great writer Hunter S. Thompson said, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” And unlike Orr, Placide never crash-lands. He always ends up on his feet.
ok- break what you can afford.