My mnemonic for the word "weird" is "wired weird". I can remember the spelling of "wired" with no problems, and if I remember that "weird" has the i/e order switched from "wired", I'm all good to go.
"weird" is weird in that it violates "i before e except after c", anyway.
We had this dreadfully ugly, but very efficient tape dispenser in the family when I was growing up. I have no idea where it came from, as the thing is probably older than I am.
Mama and I were wrapping presents upstairs one year, and there was a sudden commotion downstairs, so I got up with my bare feet to find out what was going on. A lot of hydrogen peroxide and a few butterfly bandages later, there was a new house rule: No Tape Dispensers on the Floor.
On #1, how long, and at what power?
I had wanted to meet him. The world indeed is darker.
For smaller events, or events with a specific reasonably-sized guest list, the Corknut Pizza Arbiter (or something similar) might help do part of the work for what to put on the "special toppings" whinge-pie. That tool finds the pizza toppings that the submitted list of (registered) guests has in common. An ideal pizza-division tool would start looking at additional pies with an eye to getting everyone enough pizza and maximizing the available toppings after a certain number of guests were entered, of course...
One of the worst protection-conscious combinations I can think of offhand could be thinly-papered tables and Sharpie markers. If all available flat surfaces are neatly covered in inexpensive sheet paper (that a Sharpie will bleed through in a second) and markers are available for marking drinks, it's not going to take too long before someone gets a bright idea, picks up a marker, and starts illustrating something on the available paper.
I recall Dad building a scoop with spring-powered launcher, for purposes of yard cleanup after a neighbor's dog. (This was at my aunt's house.)
Dad and my uncle put the thing quietly away after missing the target of the neighbor's lawn and hitting their roof.
It looks like the crowd around here is largely the choir, so I'll avoid preaching to it. As far as people who "don't want to get involved" are concerned, if any of them are reading this, there isn't generally much "involvement" to making a 911 call in response to an injury, at the very least.
The last-but-one 911 call I made was because of a car wreck at midnight in front of my apartment's balcony. It was a noisy crash, and when I opened my blinds to see what the matter was, there was already a crowd gathering. I knew my running down to help would serve nothing; I let my previous phone conversation go with a "Car crash, gotta call 911" and called.
I wasn't asked my name. I was asked the location of the crash, and pertinent details like the number of injured, the number, color, and general type of vehicles involved, and then questions about the injured like:
Are they breathing?
Are they bleeding?
I got the impression that the 911 operator was glad to have a coherent person on the line, but that she was used to asking the right questions to get the right information, and saying the right things to calm down someone in a panic.
I have the lungs of iron and the voice of brass. I was on a balcony with a commanding view of the accident. I relayed information between the zeroth responders on the scene and the emergency operator, by dint of bellowing the questions I couldn't answer myself down to the people standing down by the accident. I think at some point I bellowed, "I'm on the phone with 911!" so everyone would know that 911 had been called, that help was on the way, and that the questions I was asking weren't just me being a nosy bystander, it was 911 asking through me. I must admit that I was trembling, terrified of telling others what to do, of speaking to complete strangers, but more terrified of what could happen if I didn't.
And it's amazing how people who don't know what to do in a crisis will listen to someone who does know what to do, or at least acts as if they do. They take their cue from the leadership they're given. If the Person Acting Like They're In Charge is calm, the people observing or involved in the emergency will be calmer than they otherwise might. If any perceived leaders are in hysterics or suchlike during the emergency, people who don't know what's going on are going to assume that it's worse than they think, and panic themselves...
Training oneself into a calm and helpful response to an emergency is possible. I see so many people in the comments here who treat responding calmly to life-threatening emergency situations as a matter of course, and it might be easy to think that either you're born with the ability to react coolly in an emergency or you're not. But that's not the case. The first crucial factor is knowledge of what to do in an emergency, and what to expect -- first-aid classes, instructions like this triage training here. The second one is practice. After a few rounds calling 911, after dealing with more than one co-worker having an asthma attack or shock set in, you know how to react. And it's not such a big deal.
And it means the world to the person you help, even if all you did was call for medical aid and sit there with them being calm or holding pressure on a wound.
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