 Yeah, random incident. This is about a day that my husband and I were crossing the street, minding our own business in a crosswalk, and we're both hit by a car. Does everyone already know that they cut your clothes off in the ambulance? They cut off all your clothes, and you can't negotiate. You can't save your $250 Christmas shirt by arguing that your husband bought it for you at by hand on Shattuck, right by Chez Panisse, and that you've hardly worn it because you still have those extra few pounds to lose. And you can't save your Eileen Fisher skirt that was, OK, maybe not all that expensive since you bought it at the outlet store. And you can't save your best everyday bathing suit that you wear as your all-purpose underclothes or your brown Jesus T-shirt from the Chicano art show at the D Young that was sponsored by Cheech Marin. Jack later said that he found the experience of having his clothes cut off invigorating. I have no idea why. It may be because he managed to save his boots. The EMT was struggling with my IV, a complicated process involving precise needle piercing the vein in an ambulance that's rocking back and forth, cornering, starting, stopping. You're on the freeway. The EMT said the worst was when they had to work on motorcycle riders who have the most gory accidents, gaping wounds, compound fractures, friction burns, loss of vast amounts of blood. And these guys may be way more than halfway dead, but they still rouse themselves to beg the ambulance guys to please, please not cut off their clothes. This is because their jackets and pants are so expensive, but also because bikers don't really feel like true bikers unless they're wearing their leathers. And it was against that kind of institutional resistance that my husband was up against that he was up against that he undertook his Save the Boots campaign. His legs and feet were fine, Jack insisted. If the EMT could just slip his boots off, they were really soft. It would go really easily, easy to get them off. Jack could then wiggle his toes and show them. He just got these boots, Jack said, which had been handmade for him by a bootmaker named Armando in so and so forth, Texas, for which Jack's feet needed to be measured in something like 17 places, including the width of each individual heel and the height of both right and left in step, all this accomplished by mail order and by intricate phone messages. And you don't even pay for the boots. None of this is online. You do it. You send a check when they're done and they're fitting perfectly. This is the same bootmaker used by Sean Penn and by Peter Coyote and by Willie Nelson, Jack is saying. And he'd become mentioning other really famous people, I noticed that Jack either did or did not know. Robin Williams, Bosgag's, who either did or did not own these boots made by Armando. Jack wanted just two things, well, three. He wanted his boots, his cashmere socks, and he wanted the metal around his neck. If his EMT could just slip the boots off, great, great. And the socks, and then unhook the chain and drop the metal down into one boot. And then put the socks in there, great. Everything would be safe. And Jack would know where to find everything later. The metal Jack wears is the St. Anthony, which is the patron saint of lost things. The EMTs explain shock trauma to you as the ambulance is arriving. It may seem chaotic, but that's because there are a lot of people working frantically on you. All it wants to do, one simple thing, which is to save your life. There are teams who have a specific job. And each is one area of expertise, and they'll be talking over you. And they're not going to waste a lot of time explaining what they're doing. Jack was going in first. I'd be right behind him. We'd be in the same place. They'd be giving us something for pain. And I'm thinking, oh, yeah, right. Like a tiny tic-tac size Tylenol with codeine or something. What you want in this situation is something really heavy duty. Shock trauma seemed to me like a jolly place. It reminded me actually of the cocktail party atmosphere that attended the birth of my first child when there were all these relaxed people going about their business calmly, their business being helping you. Meanwhile, they're talking over your body because you're this project of theirs. And that they're cheerfully working on together. And it feels like it's the afternoon before the prom. And they're decorating the gym. And you're the gym. Thank you.