Don't Eat the Charms

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In 2007, after spending many long decades on the United States military's menu, a particularly unpopular brand of candies, seeming otherwise innocuous to the uninitiated, were yanked from supply lists rather unceremoniously. Though no official reason was ever given for the change in MRE supplement, a keen observer may deduce it had something to do with the prevalent negative press the candies received among soldiers, especially after World War II. 

"Charms" were but ordinary tropical-flavored hard candies. They were the first of their kind to be individually wrapped in cellophane, ideal for sending overseas into combat zones. Charms had the potential to take the candy world by storm-- and they did, if not in the way their inventor had perhaps anticipated. 

"Don't eat the Charms" became a popular nugget of wisdom, passed from soldier to soldier. Marines involved in Desert Storm reported that the Iraq ground invasion and every bad turn it took as a result of these ill-fated confections. 

Sampling the yellow Charms, harmless little lemon-flavored snacks, was rumored to be the reason many vehicles broke down. The green ones, innocently flavored as lime, might as well have been rain-sticks, causing sudden storms that flooded the desert paths. And if you touched the ominous dark red ones, tasted the sugary raspberry sweetness-- well, that was the taste of death.

We'll never know if raspberry Charms were the true killers, cursing soldiers with fatal bad luck. There's no rational, scientific way to measure juju. Even so, the belief permeated the armed forces. Some veterans tell stories of commanding officers ordering the candies be disposed of, on threat of disciplinary action should any man be caught with them in his mouth. So when the candies were removed in 2007, there wasn't much outcry from the enlisted.

It can seem silly to those of us far out from the front lines, hearing about grown men and women fearing candies because of some supposed back luck. But the thing you have to understand is this is what human nature is. 

Our species rules the earth. We've built towering cathedrals that reach up into the heavens. We've put ourselves on the moon, and learned how to cut each other open and slice out diseases. We wage wars and write epics about journeys across the seas. Many of us won't know death until well into adulthood, at far lower rates than those our ancestors saw. It feels at times like we're on the brink of invincibility, one miracle drug away from immortality itself. 

But the humans who know death intimately may see things in a different light. It's true that the end is just one accident, illness, or chance encounter away from us all. But when those situations are as unlikely as they are to most of us, it can be easy to dismiss thoughts of them as "irrational fears" or "paranoia."

Soldiers avoid Charms. They have been known to carry coins whose dates can be added up to equal thirteen, engraved pocket-watches or cord bracelets with the names of loved ones woven in. Sailors refuse to whistle onboard ships, lest it tempt the wrath of Neptune, and tankers avoid apricots at all costs, a tradition carrying on from World War II. After a vehicle supposedly carrying, among others, a guy with a white lighter in his pocket, went off a cliff, those too became as notorious in military circles as with believers in the "27 Club."

Emergency room staff, many of whom are doctors and nurses with extensive scientific education, are known to tout their own superstitions. "The q-word" is a taboo in many hospitals, as any acknowledgement of a lack of activity is bound to invite an influx of it. Some refuse to order Chinese food while on the clock, believing it will portend disaster. Saying the name of a regular patient will draw them in, and tying a knot in a patient's bedsheet will expedite their fate, speeding along their recovery or bringing about more quickly the end of their suffering. 

First responders, like soldiers and E.R. staff, are notoriously superstitious creatures. We have rites, rituals, and rules, and tokens that we believe (with varying degrees of seriousness) will protect us from danger. Many of the rules in Dispatch are mirrored in other fields: don't invoke the Q-word, don't say the name of a frequent flier unless you want them to make a sudden appearance, and beware the full moon-- those nights, as well as the Fridays that land on the thirteenth of the month, will be the longest of your career. I also have it on good authority that most firefighters will be extra sure to put their turn-out gear in exactly the same place every time. "Goodbye" is an underutilized salutation for both fire and police personnel, with many preferring the more optimistic, "See you later."

"Horseshoe, Dice, and Four-Leaf Clover." 2024, ink on paper.
Okay, so I'm not an artist. Sue me. Anyway, that's the pen.

I have my own superstitions, too. I have a favorite pen, and if for any reason I can't find it, I just know that today is going to be a long day. Gabe's old EMS patch, a token of his confidence in my ability to succeed, lives in the left leg pocket of my uniform pants, only being taken out long enough to move to a fresh pair. When I take notes on the yellow legal pads in the Dispatch office, I never write on the back of a page, even though I detest the waste of paper.

Do these rituals actually do anything? Will losing my pen really cause the day to spiral into chaos, or is the added weight of its heavy tactical design merely a comfortable familiarity to which I have assigned some meaning?

One of my oldest friends was a girl named Rosie, with whom I had attended first grade. As with all long-term friendships, we would occasionally fight. But no matter how angry we got with each other, she would never let me leave the fight until she had said, "I love you," and heard me say it back. For years, I never understood why she was like this, until one day in high school when she finally told me.

One day, when Rosie was only ten or eleven, she had gotten into a big fight with her mother. Just before she stormed off, she'd called out over her shoulder, "I hate you, Mom!"

None of us had seen it coming when she died. It was a freak accident. One of those things you never see coming. And the last thing Rosie had ever said to her was, "I hate you." 

Suddenly, my friend's fixation made sense. She'd been traumatized by the death of her mother, and it had been made worse by the last words she said to her.

Robert Meganck, "Superstition"

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if the rituals exist in some extra dimension where the dates on coins are cataloged and the carriers of ones adding to thirteen shielded from danger. We carry our superstitions for a reason. High-stress jobs like those in public safety spawn superstition because amidst the chaos of crisis management, there's comfort in ritual.

We've all  been traumatized by something terrible happening on the one day we couldn't find our coin, our lucky pen, the bracelet with our girlfriend's name on it. Made mistakes when writing on the back of yellow paper. Lost someone after a fight gone unresolved. And so we all find comfort in the things that give us a feeling of control, illusory as it may be. They allow us to feel as though there's some pattern, some meaning behind all the seemingly random ways in which life can go terribly wrong.

My house burned down on the one day I didn't have my purse; now I carry a backpack with everything I might need if I have to spend a night somewhere unexpectedly.

Rosie always ends a fight with, "I love you."

Firefighters don't say goodbye; only "See you tomorrow." Nurses never comment about it being "the Q-word," and you'll be hard pressed to find a soldier willing to carry a white lighter.

And all of us agree: never, ever eat the Charms.

Routine Stop

There's a strangely soothing rhythm to traffic stops. They tend to be very formulaic, following the same steps in roughly the same order every time. 

As soon as my officer has flashed his blues, before he even gets out of his cruiser, he calls me over the radio and advises me of his location and the vehicle's plates, and usually the reason for the stop.

From my desk, I run the plate out in the state it's registered in. My software will check it against DMV records to find vehicle information, including its R.O. (registered owner), whose information it will then run through the DMV and CJIS. I'll be shown results for their information, criminal history, and any open warrants they may have in the system. All of this I can backfill to the call in my CAD.

A few moments later, the officer might tell me, "Operator is the R.O." (registered owner), which I can also backfill through this page. If another person is driving, the officer will give me their license number. Run that out in their state and I'll get much of the same: criminal record, driving history, past traffic violations. I can then attach this to the call as well.

Whether the officer writes a ticket, issues a written warning, or lets them off with a verbal warning, it will be assigned a "CN," or citation number. This too gets attached to the call before I clear the officer and close it out.

Some officers do a lot of stops. Some will often be out with another before I've finished clearing the last, again and again until you wonder why anybody speeds in this town anymore. Others will avoid them at all costs, going so long without writing a ticket that they forget how. (True story-- she'd been going 45 in a 25 school zone, and had been so rude to the Lieutenant that I can't imagine she'd have gotten away with it under any other circumstances.)

But whether they do a hundred stops a day or barely one a year, every officer follows the same general pattern. Each stop is the same, with very few exceptions, and I always know what to expect next. 

Alarm calls, the kinds we get from security monitoring centers or as a response to medical pendant activations, are like this too. Pick up the phone. It's coming in through the 9-1-1 phone, but through the 7-digit number, which means it's likely from a call center. They tell me they've got a medical pendant activation, or a commercial burg alarm, or a telematics notification from a vehicle that may have been in an accident.

From there, I collect the following data, in this order:

• Address
• Nature of the alert
• PTN (person to notify) or patient's name and date of birth
• Case number or the caller's company-assigned operator ID

"If anything changes or if you get any further calls about this case, give us a call back. ...You too, thanks."

It's the same conversation, every time. It's formulaic. Routine.

I like routine. I like it when things go according to plan. It's not exactly a secret that I'm autistic, and when I do refer to my diagnosis by name in front of my coworkers for the first time, most of them seem less than surprised.

"You're autistic?" they'll ask, their faces thoughtful. Then they'll nod as if thinking, Yeah, that tracks. 

Why not a puzzle piece? Tori Morales, autistic writer
and advocate, eloquently explains in this article.
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It almost always happens like that. It's kind of like a routine in of itself. I don't mind; it's not their fault there are few to no authentic representations out there that depict autism the way I experience it. (And if they try to bond with me by informing me that their nephew is autistic, or that their favorite character of The Big Bang Theory is Sheldon Cooper, I usually change the subject.)

But while many parts of this job-- traffic stops, arrest packets, filling in timestamps, paperwork-- are methodical and routine, the job itself is anything but predictable. 

Some nights, the 9-1-1 phone won't ring once. Occasionally, a big event, like a bad crash on the highway or an involved structure fire, will flood the PSAP with calls, all trying to report the same thing. Sometimes the calls will flood in all at once, despite each reporting a different emergency.

The following contains a brief description of a suicide attempt. Discretion advised.

When I was working on a study guide for Reg, I made cards with important questions for different call natures. The hardest one to write by far was the one for a suicidal caller. I started with the basics: location, presence of weapons, best access to the home. After that, I was stumped. This is one of those call natures when you'd want to keep them talking as long as possible. If they're talking, they're breathing, and if they're breathing, they're not dead, and there's still hope.

But what do you say in that situation? A complete stranger calls you and tells you that they want to take their own life. Once you've started help, what's next? 

"What makes you want to--"

"What's going on that you feel like--"

"How did you get to this--"

I kept starting the next question over again, unable to get the words right. Finally, I decided to just move on to another card. 

A few days later, I still hadn't gotten around to finishing that study guide when I got a call that finally taught me what my study guide had been missing.

"I just cut my wrists," the caller told me after the pre-recorded greeting ended. 

"Okay, sir, where are you?"

He told me the address placidly. 

"And the best access is through the front door?"

"Yes, it's unlocked."

Here, I deviated from the script. "What's your name?"

"Eli."

"What did you use to cut your wrists, Eli?"

"A kitchen knife." 

"Okay, and where is that now?"

"Next to me, on the floor." 

I swallowed. "Okay, Eli. Here's what I need you to do. Can you put that knife somewhere safe for me?"

"Like where?"

After some back and forth, we agreed on the kitchen sink. I knew I was losing time, but getting that knife secured was my first priority. Before he settled back down on the floor, I instructed Eli to get some clean towels.

"Do they have to be paper, or will-- will my bath towel work?"

"A bath towel will work fine, just as long as it's clean and dry," I assured him. "Now I want you to press down on the cuts with the towel, applying pressure."

"Hm-- hey, miss? How am I supposed to push down on both at the same time?"

Thinking fast, I asked him, "Can you press your wrists together around the towel, and then put them between your knees?" 

"Ah, yes, I think I can do that."

There was a bit of scuffling as Eli assumed his position. In the few moments it took him to get back on the line, I had a sudden and important revelation.

When I'd shown my trainer the study guide, she'd reminded me of something that is said a lot during training: "There is no script," she said. "Every call is different, and you can't rely on a checklist for every call you're going to get."

I'd assured her that I understood this, that the cards were just a study guide for what information is most pertinent in different types of situation. 

But now, listening to Eli's tranquility lapse into dawning panic, I realized just how right she had been. This wasn't a test, and there was no right answer. 

Eli's voice was small and timid, like a small child's when he told me, "I don't want to die."

My heart ached. "I know, Eli." I wanted to tell him he was going to be okay, that it didn't sound like he was on the brink of bleeding out. But you can't make promises in this line of work. Certainly I am nobody to be making promises on behalf of God.

"My guys are gonna take care of you," I said instead. "They're gonna do their best to help you."

Once the police were on scene, I told Eli that he was in good hands before disconnecting. The trainer, who had been silent monitoring the call, looked over at me with a look of approval.

I looked back at him and allowed myself a deep breath. "There's no script."

He shook his head. "No. There isn't." He searched my face. "You okay?"

"I think so," I told him. "It's just... strange. It came so naturally. I think I forgot for a minute what I was doing on the phone with him in the first place.

That night, I was finally able to finish my study guide card:

There really is no 'average' call. And really, even the most routine parts of this job can turn over in seconds. Any call could  be the one that changes everything. Any traffic stop could be the one where someone gets hurt, or killed. At the end of the day, there's no such thing as a routine stop.