I’m not the squeamish type. That’s not to say, that if someone on Fear Factor were to eat a cow eyeball that it would not send me dry-heaving to the toilet (I have very sensitive gag-reflexes), but usually I can handle the poke from a needle just fine. I don’t have to close my eyes during the surgery on Grey’s Anatomy anymore, so I figured I could handle today’s Mock Disaster without getting woozy. And, actually, I could handle it, though I understand that some people (BOY people even) are the squeamish types and can’t stomach all the fake gore, and need the restorative properties of juice to calm their troubled nerve system.

            So what, pray tell, is a Mock Disaster? Mock Disaster is a chance for us in the theater department to flex our make-up muscles and recreate all the enchanting bodily injuries that natural/ human induced disaster can create. Today we did an earthquake, so after visiting the make-up department (I was rather disappointed with my make-up artist. I wanted the rebar through my arm), we clambered into a dark warehouse and spread debris around us and recreated death and destruction.

            This wasn’t all purposeless, though, let’s be honest, a bunch of theater kids probably would have done it just for fun anyways. It was actually for people in triage training pass their certification tests to become EMT’s. Today, medical personnel approached my “lifeless” body, and carted me out of the abandoned warehouse on a gurney, took my pulse and deduced that I was only faking dead (true) and then located my husband/boyfriend/ baby child Timmy. The EMT training people only made me break character once, and it was when they suggested that my mock boyfriend/husband whisper sweet nothings into my ear in order to revive me, and then I just had to laugh. But even when they almost gave me CPR, I was ready (and… maybe a little willing [not true]).

Here are just a few pictures of my experience today.

She got the injury I wanted, and she was very happy about it.

            Truth be told, it was actually kind of a fun experience, even if I had been a little bit squeamish, but it wasn’t hard to picture my brothers and sisters on the other side of the world who probably wish that they were incurring a “mock” disaster. I can’t imagine the horror of not really knowing where your husband/baby/wife/friend is, or whether or not they are ok. I can’t imagine how horrible it would be to listen to triage come in and mark you for Immediate Removal, and then have to wait in your own blood for twenty more grueling minutes. While lying in my own little pool of mint-flavored blood-colored corn syrup, I said a little prayer for our friends in South America, and I hope that all those brave EMT’s pass their tests and save someone’s life because of it.