Asphalt!

During the summer, every city has its celebration. A week of events, set up to celebrte the heritage of the people who live there. Each city's celebration is similar, but there are a few differences in each celebration. Most cities have the carnival, the parade, baby contest, fireworks, the whole 9. One city, had what is called a burnout. It aslo had a car cruise too. No rodeo grounds there, I guess. The car cruise is self explanatory. People with old cars restored and such, would drive up and down a closed off road to show off the hard work. the ambulance I had worked for, would always have an ambulance on hand and medical people stationed at the areas. Quite a few years sadly, someone was always hit. I hated the car cruise for this reason. I love old cars, and like the parade they did, but they would circle around and get all excited a the crowd and speed off to cheers, sadly as a child would get too close to the action and be hit. I tried to always avoid working it, becasue of this. Instead, I chose to help out at the burnout. I had lived there for 22 years, not knowing what one was. I had just come off a call with my crew, and we parked the ambulance in the driveway. The burnout was happening on the same street of the station. I walked over and stood in an appropriate area to watch. For all city activities that week, we were to wear our white dress shirts...

As the burnouts began, I was finally introduced to this, "activity?" I admit, I sat an laughed to myself, for a good long while. For those of you who may not know, there are trucks lined up off to one side. they pull in one at a time, to a wet spot that is made from a garden hose and a gallon of bleach poured there too. the truck gets in position, and on the announcers count, they rev the engine and spin the back tires to emit smoke. That's it. If you add the bleach, more smoke and even colors appear. That's it. The crowd of people on either side cheer, and cheer more. I kept asking myself, how much beer they drank to cheer for something like that. This was to go on for a couple hours. I thought and still think, it is the biggest waste of time I've ever experienced. Well, as I had these thoughts, karma struck. The next truck in line pulled into position. The engine revved up, and the tires spun. Smoke barrelled off them. Right then, I felt a piercing burn and stinging just above my right collar bone. As I jumped and yelled, I felt two more on different spots on my chest and stomach. I turned to my partner... "Tyson, what's on me?" he replied, "Your neck, theres a white spot on it!" I grabbed at my neck, and the "white spot" was my melted skin. It fell into my hand. I felt the other spots sting and my neck was throbbing. A firfighter grabbed me by the hand and took me to the ambulance. I looked in the mitrror and noticed a 2 inch by 2 inch hole in my neck. I opened up my shirt, and foound 2 bits of tar-like spots on my stomach and chest. I grabbed and they were stuck to me. I peeled them off and they took my skin too. The tires when they spin so fast, literally melt, and a piece of melted rubber had hit me right where a normal t-shirt would've protected me, but I had the button up on. I cleaned it out, and really hated the burnout the rest of the time as my neck throbbed. That was my last night of work, as I was leaving to a dance workshop, and then Los Angeles to take dance classes for part of the summer. For my classes, I tried to cover the burn with a bandage, but would sweat it off. It looked like I had a bite there! I always wondered if in class the instructors were looking at me dancing, or trying to figure out what the devil happened to my neck. To this day I have a scar. I tried a procedure in hair school, to tattoo it with a "dry needle", meaning it had no color on it, to try to stimulate the pigment of my skin to come back, it didn't work. I learned my lesson that day. Never work a burnout. And if you do, never, ever, make fun of the white-trash and their entertainment, especially, where bleach is involoved.