Feeling faint

There's something that happens on a regular basis at major music events that would be quite amusing if it wasn't so damn annoying for us - people (predominantly young girls) 'fainting'.

Now if someone has genuinely fainted, I'm all for heading over and helping them out - it's just that this is usually not the case. We have a term for this; 'playing possum', as possums are known to 'play dead' when confronted by a big scary animal to detract attention. These people do the same but to achieve the opposite - the 'patient' doesn't really need medical attention (of the non-psychiatric kind perhaps) but pretends to so that the big scary animal (me, naturally, and their friends) give them the attention they so crave. Some of you might remember I've blogged on this before.

The case that makes me bring this up again occured at (surprise) a concert where we got a call from security to attend a faint at the rear of the arena. My partner and I were the closest responding crew being at the front of the stage (naturally ;P) with the fastest route being through the crowd to the back of the arena. While it didn't take us long to get through, it's never a nice thing to have to shoulder yourself and your partner, each laden with big heavy gear through a crowd surging in the opposite direction to an aging man singing about teenage angst. Kids these days...

We arrive at our destination to find a security guard with a grin on their face - the patient 'didn't want to wait, so she decided to walk to a designated first aid post to faint'.


But as I said at the start, sometimes these faints are serious in nature. My sympathies go out to MAS who recently had an influx of such patients - although I can't vouch for all of their validity - a fair proportion have been reported to me by a worker as legitimate faints. With the warmer weather here I'm sure not looking forward to next summer!

One final thing - this article was released a few days back almost implicating the police of killing a man with capsicum spray... sneaky reporters twisting the scenario! Murderous cops sells papers, the heartfelt efforts of overworked, under appreciated and often abused (verbally/ physically/ mentally) police doesn't.