Did you hear the one about the two drunks walkin’ down the railroad track?
By Terrance Seamus Gavan
I was listening to some vintage George Carlin on the weekend.
He has a one-liner about crisis intervention workers.
“If you work on a suicide hotline, and you’re feeling just a little depressed one morning. Do you phone in sick?”
The answer is no. Because that work on the phones, when you get right down to it, is more important than any little thing currently meandering through your tight and pampered prism. So unless you wake up with a sudden urge to head to the roof of your high-rise apartment building and “try for the double line” – another George Carlin jive and jump (and album cover) on the big exit – you should just probably suck it up, brush your teeth, have an espresso, go on in and answer the phones.
“Hi, Suicide Line, my name’s Terry, and before we get started, do you have any Lottery tickets in your wallet that you haven’t checked yet? Cos’ y’know, life is good, and it may already have gotten better.”
I used to work the midnight shift three times a month at the Ottawa Distress Centre back in the mid-70s.
I was dillydallying around St. Pats College and Carleton University plodding through an undeclared year of liberal arts.
They put the young volunteers on the midnight shift. Back then, the Ottawa Distress Center was grossly under funded and we worked out of a ramshackle old building in the old Byward Market District.
The Ottawa Distress Center was not a suicide line per se, but the midnight shift did get the lion’s share of the “one and done” calls. It was before call display, and if we had a “live one on the dead line” who was fading fast from an overdose we were authorized to have the call traced, and once traced, we also had the authority to dispatch an ambulance. We had to phone poison control just to make sure that what the person took was actually gonna’ kill him. The centre got charged for all ambulance calls. It was all tied to the bottom line.
I got a lot of overdose calls. And if the person was fading, I traced, I dispatched. I once sent an ambulance and squad car to a house where the man had ingested a fifth of Jack Daniels and 10 packages of Ex Lax. I didn’t know what he had taken, hadn’t checked in with poison control, and I was listening as the cops and paramedics broke down the door.
I heard some swearing. A cop grabbed the phone. “Hey Terry?”
“Yes, that’s me, how is he?”
“He’s fine. He took Ex Lax Terry! EX LAX! Capiche? He’s doin’ just great, got a dumb grin on his puss. We’re all covered in shit! Thanks for the call out buddy!” Oops.
A Monday night 2 a.m. and I’m alone at the Distress Centre. A call.
It’s a young woman. She lives across the river in the Gatineau area. Her name is Jennifer, she’s 32 and has three girls sleeping upstairs in their large home on 10 sprawling acres. Her husband, a lawyer, is overseas on business.
“I have a gun, Terry,” she says, the voice a far off drift. No affect. Just statement.
“Is it loaded, Jennifer?” I ask.
“Just doing that now,” says Jennifer. And I hear the unmistakable sound of bullets being pushed slowly into the chamber of a revolver. “Click, click, click.”
I ask her why.
“I don’t know Terry. I just know it has to end tonight,” she says. I know that it’s too late for a call trace. I’m all alone. And I can hear in her voice a quiver, and that unmistakable rumble of despair. The kind of despair that rises like a tide from the abyss of a heart, too close to the breaking.
The training kicks in and I ask about her kids, upstairs sleeping. I need names. They are Suzy, Janie and Sarah, 3, 5 and 8. I remind Jen that they will be the ones to find her in the morning.
“It’s better for them if I’m gone, and in time they’ll understand,” says Jennifer. I hear the spin of the chamber. “My husband taught me how to shoot this thing,” says Jennifer. “Truth is, I really hate guns.”
And right there. I heard something in her voice. An affect. And I abandoned all the training.
“Can I tell you a joke Jennifer?” I ask gently.
“A joke? Why not,” she replies.
I continued. Breaking all the rules for a suicide call.
“A couple of Newfie hunters are at a truck stop diner when one of them grabs his chest and falls to the floor,” I begin - my own chest pounding. “He’s not breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy runs to the diner’s phone and calls emergency services. He gasps to the operator: ‘My friend is dead! What can I do?’
“The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: ‘Just take it easy. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s really dead.’ There’s silence; then a shot is heard.
“The Newfie comes back to the line. He says: ‘OK, now what?’ ”
It seemed like an eternity, but I know it was only 3 seconds. Jennifer starts to laugh.
“Very nice, Terry,” says Jennifer. “I’m unloading the gun and I’m going up to kiss my three daughters good night … but not goodbye.”
“And the number I gave you?” I asked.
“I have it here on the pad and I’ll call the Shrink in the morning,” says Jennifer.
A month later at the Distress Centre desk, a note addressed, “To Terry.”
I opened it.
“Dear Terry – Seeing the shrink. The gun is gone. Life is better. OK, Now What? Jen.”
We pass a lot of signposts in our journey.
I come from a long line of Irish humorists.
My fallback philosophy?
“When in doubt … go for the big laugh.”
Sometimes it’ll keep you off that double line.
OK. Now what?
(Special thanks to Aunt Lorraine, the Reverend Donald Francis Gavan and my pops, who taught me to slay my demons with laughter.)
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