Like all things, they are good and bad when used in haste, and I refer to the, on the one hand cursed, as essential social networks, there are those who strive to turn them into a showcase of their supposed total happiness in every moment of his life, there are those who use them to pour into them all the frustrations and personal anger against others who perhaps do not even know, but that their exhibition, which spoke before happiness, causes them the resentment that then dump in their comments, there are others, perhaps the least, those who write down every moment, all the vicissitudes of their work, looking for a publicity that gives them a benefit, photographers exposing their last works, future new writers who write short lines of their last story, and even, there are those who use them to search and find again that friend, that special person that time placed far away, maybe not in distance, but in opportunities to meet again, as you can understand, a thousand and one varied reasons, as legitimate as incomprehensible for any of us.
And today, in one of those social networks, I have placed a past image, from another century, from another time, I am just in a corner, and if you have not known me from that time, it is difficult for you to recognize me, in fact, even I do not recognize myself in it.
What pushed me to it?
As I put in the title…nostalgia.
Nostalgia of a bygone era, in which, don’t be surprised, there was no cell phone, letters were sent with stamps that took forever to be received, to be handwritten or, the coolest in Paraguay, did it with typewriters, those that you had to turn the lever to move to another line, a time when, those who were like me, young in spirit and age, we thought we were invincible, owners of all reason and tireless in the face of failure.
In the eighties, the Red Cross was still militarized in terms of uniform, ranks of command and even, for some lucky ones, the possibility of doing military service in it, a Red Cross in which they never put you any obstacles or conditions to become part of a platoon, a short course of basic first aid, a military uniform with white shoulder pads with the red cross, a cap, and a, we called it that way because of the color, cookie with the insignia of the unit on one side of the chest of the shirt.
Then came the rest…
Weekends at aid stations along many roads, concerts and games that we got into for free and cursed when someone got sick, we had to move them and we missed part of the event, and we started to feel different, like we were part of something different.
Different…..
Tell me you, who have not lived that time, if you can imagine the feeling that we felt, even today, when, at a particular time, the switchboard warned us of an accident on the road so and so, as the silence took over us and we rode in those ambulances, as we ran out of them, Sometimes almost without having stopped at all and shouted ¡¡dejan paso¡¡¡, imagine the scene of seeing three or four military green, taking the reins of the accident, rescuing, healing, bandaging, placing the wounded on stretchers and transferring them to the hospital, imagine that wounded having a cardiac arrest on the road and how, after a brief call to the emergency room, that ambulance arrived and when opening the gate, one of us was there, riding on top of him, applying a cardiac massage without pause, without rest, without ever recognizing the defeat that perhaps the grim reaper was claiming him, imagine the return to look for the rest of the comrades, That entrance back to the starting barracks and listen to your responsible, that they had called the hospital and he/she was alive, that going at full speed with the ambulance, that you never gave up, that you never gave up, maybe, just maybe, had something to do with the fact that he/she was still alive.
A party, celebrations in the canteen, perhaps, because at that time they were given, some medal, some mention …. Well, no, I never saw it, I only saw half smiles, I only saw how shoulders tired from 12 hours on duty broadened, I only saw how one who had broken his soul doing a cardiac massage for half an hour straight, thanked his driver who took them all to a hospital, like the one at the radio station, who had given us the right address, who had warned the hospital in advance so they would be ready when we arrived, he received the same congratulations, I only saw how we were all one.
Nostalgia for words like…volunteers…commitment…duty…modesty…pride….
It’s just a picture, but what can I say, it’s a picture of one of the most incredible times I’ve ever lived.
*** Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***
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