Infuriated by Lost? Get your answers here.

After my first aid class yesterday, I received a number of phone calls from various people. We chatted. I filled them in on my Saturday whereabouts. Then they would ask the inevitable question... "Sarah, you are a designer. Why on earth would you want to take a first aid class?"

Here are my answers listed in chronological order. If you get the heebie-jeebies easily, I would skip this post.

In 2001, I worked at a scenery shop in Manhattan. My boss had a sudden seizure. He flipped out of his rolling office chair and cracked his head on the concrete floor. His eyes were rolled back into his head. There was blood seeping out of an abrasion somewhere on his skull. No one in the shop knew what to do.

In 2003, I was riding a bus on my way to work one morning. As we pulled into the bus stop, everyone on the bus jumped up and started screaming. I was the last to get off the bus. I saw an obviously mentally ill man flailing his arm in the air. His arm was flopping in an unnatural manner. Blood was spurting from the place where his bone was jutting through the skin. (He had been riding on the bus with his arm out the window. When we rounded the corner, his arm was crunched between the bus and a parked truck.) Everyone who had been on the bus was standing in a circle around him, but no one was making a move to help him. And, I admit, it was an intimidating situation.

In January of this year, I was riding the subway when a man tried to hop on the train before the doors closed and didn't make it. The doors closed on his shoulders and he fell forward onto his face. Apparently, something had broken in his back and he couldn't move. It took 15 minutes for the paramedics to arrive.

In March of this year, I was walking down the street when a teenager walked up to me and asked where the nearest emergency room was. He was holding a bloody napkin over a cut on his arm. I asked him what happened and he said he had been attacked by another group of kids. Then he showed me the stab wound in his back.

In all of these situations, I immediately jumped in to help. It's not something I think about. When I see someone who needs help, my first thought is how to help them. Unfortunately, my second thought is: "Crap... what if I just wind up making the situation worse?"

Up until now, I've been lucky. I did exactly the right thing for my boss. I could have done more for the guy on the bus and the kid with the stab wounds if I knew then what I know now. And, lucky for the man on the train, there was a doctor in the subway car.

Like I said, when your living in a city packed with 8 million people, you are bound to run into a few injuries here or there. So, if you are a designer, (or a lawyer/writer/producer/ad exec/house cleaner/etc...) with a penchant for responding to emergency situations, I highly recommend studying up on your first aid skills. You could very well save someone's finger/leg/memory/range of motion/life.

Here is the link for class listings at The American Red Cross of Greater NY. And a link for Red Cross websites anywhere else in the country.