Don't even try it

For our honeymoon, my wife and I took a week long cruise in the Carribean. It was wonderful, and we had a blast. I learned that one of the appeals to cruises is you get to go to other countries and take advantage of duty free liquor and cheap cigars made in countries with whom America doesn't do business.

Many people prefer to buy certain items, such as cigars and liquor and take them back home. Heather and I did not do this. In fact, one man, I called him the "fun manager," on the boat convinced us not even to try smuggling certain items back into America when he said something like this, "If you think you can beat customs, think again. It's these people's jobs to catch you, and they're good at it." And he was right. What hawaiian-t-shirt-wearing jerk thinks he can sneak something past people who catch you for a living. (Except for the time I smuggled 3 miniature Cuban cigars through customs on a high school cruise when I was 16. But, I wasn't wearing a hawaiian t-shirt!)

My advice, if you think you can fool these people, don't even try it.

Similarly, I was in the trauma bay recently when a man was wheeled it smelling of strong alcohol. Not unusual. As he was conscious, the doctors began asking him what happened.

"I fell," was his first attempt.

"Mr. K, you have a knife wound here," said the doctor skeptically, "who else was involved?"

"Uh, nobody," said the man eyeing the police officer waiting in the corner, "I was by myself." Getting frustrated the no-nonsense doctor said, "Sir, you want to tell us what really happened so we can help you?"

Lie after obvious-no-time-to-concoct-a-worthy-story lie, this man tried to hide what really happened to him from the medical staff and police. In his drunken stupor, and because they'll only ask what happened so many time, he seemed to believe that the docs and nurses believed him. But, if you've ever considered lying to ER staff, let me be very clear about something: you're not the first inebriated bonehead who thinks he can slip one past these people!

They see injuries everyday and know what certain injuries should look like. Like the customs agents, it's their job. It's actually not that uncommon for people to try and lie their way through the trauma bay, but it never works. People have tried to say it was a bar fight when clearly they'd been driving, or some have simply claimed that they don't know what happened even though they were awake the entire time. "I don't know how the car accident happened," is a common explanation even when EMS finds a cell phone with part of a text message typed. Honestly, how can you not know how it happened when your father-in-law shoots you in your own living room?

Actually, the best patients in the ER are the ones that tell the truth. The med staff often starts chuckling when a man begins a sentence with, "I'm not going lie to you..." because we know it's usually going to end with something good: "...I had way to much to drink, and she was smok'n hott." Or, "I wanted to show my buddies that you can jump a moped off a ramp just like a dirt bike. Guess I wa' wrong."

The best what the guy with the finger nail scratches on his face from the girl he was cheating with claiming it was his cat to his girlfriend wouldn't find out.

My advice, if you're going to try and fib your way through the ER, don't even try it.

Colleagues, what other wacky tales or truths have you heard pass through the ETB?

{Note: picture not from SRHS trauma bay.}