Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Capital Ex : Blue Rodeo

For the past week and a bit, I took some flex time off of work and did double shifts volunteering as a first aider at the Capital Ex over at Northlands. It was great fun.

One night I was at Edfest when Blue Rodeo were playing. It was a quiet night for us. I stood stage right, watching the band, when a security guard ran over and in a frantic voice said, "There's a girl in the crowd and she's...", here he paused and calmed down, "...got a cut on her toe and needs a band-aid.". Funny guy.

"Can she come out to the first aid post?", I asked.

"She doesn't want to lose her spot.", he replied.

We're not supposed to wade into crowds, especially at concerts. We need to protect ourselves, and security are there to bring injured people to us. If it's super serious, we'll go in with a group of security people to transport someone out. I looked at him, he looked at me. I looked at the crowd of Blue Rodeo fans swaying happily to the mellow folk/country stylings of their favourite band. I shrugged, grabbed my torch (flashlight) and plasters (band-aids) and said, "I'll follow you".

He started weaving his way through the crowd, explaining that this was a test of his memory. When we got to the area, I spoke with the girl with the toe. She explained that she had gone back-countrying earlier and had ripped her toenail, then the girl in front of her stepped back and removed the whole thing for her. Ouch. I asked her if she wanted to come to the first aid post, but she was all "Blue Rodeo! Good spot! Staying here!". I told her I could hold the flashlight whilst she put on the band-aid (and that way she treats herself, so I didn't need to fill in any paperwork). She agreed, and before I knelt down to help her, I looked around at all the people surrounding us - a precaution to make sure I didn't get smacked in the head by a rowdy fan. Everyone appeared to be pretty relaxed, so I knelt down and helped her cover her toenail, and then gave her a spare band-aid and some infection control advice. That's fun during a loud concert - "GO TO THE DOCTORS IF IT GETS ICKY OKAY?".

I stood up and looked around, checking that everything was okay... And got a polite round of applause. One guy had even looked at my name tag and said, "Good job, Dean!". I made my way out (people moved out of the way without being asked) and returned to the first aid post.

Blue Rodeo fans. Not very rock and roll, but very courteous.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I was at that concert, but to see stabilo, not blue rodeo.