Here, Miss, Let Me Help You With That

Friday I finished my training classes preparing me to work in the swine flu (H1N1—Porky Flu) vaccination program. I received three certificates and a laminated badge featuring a picture of Porky Pig himself….

Wait one minute here.

That’s not Porky Pig.

That’s a photo of me on the badge!

Easy case of mistaken identity because the main thing I learned in the bioterrorism section of my training is that I’m a goner because I’m too fat to fit into a HAZMAT suit.

But, no problem.

Dr. Elena Bodnar’s wonderful invention could save my life from any germ or poison gas attack.

Saving life is what this is all about.

I’ll come back to Dr. Bodnar’s invention in a minute but I want to think about life for a moment first. Life is both tough and fragile.

For instance, back on September 24^th, I mentioned my friend Bubba’s had a heart attack and stopped breathing for 20 minutes, and being on life support. Thursday, his family decided to remove the tubes and machines. They expected him to die right then.

Bubba is still hanging on.

The life spark within us is tough and tenacious. We cling to life. It’s as though we know we were originally designed to live forever somewhere and that death is an anomaly.

On the other hand, life is fragile.

We can lose it in a second. Without warning. Between one breath and the next, we can step into Eternity.

Yesterday I mentioned Jonathan Edwards. When I was younger I read a lot of his writings. His high view of the beauty and splendor of God touched me deeply.

I recall him using an illustration of life’s fragility. He pictured us as walking through a field and stepping on the rotten wooden cover of an abandoned well. The spongy wood sags and creaks, too weak to bear our weight. Any second it may give way and drop us feet first into the darkness below. But we stroll on unaware of our danger.

Edwards said that we are kept from falling into darkness only by the strength of God’s grace. He keeps us up by His good pleasure…. And His fingers can drop us as easily as He can drop a brick. Nothing stands between life and darkness but His mercy.

Life is tough and life is fragile. This week over 4,000 people died without warning in the earthquakes in Indonesia and Peru. Scores died in Samoa when the tsunami swept over a mile inland in four minutes. Here in Jacksonville, a guy riding his bike to work, hit by a car.

Fragile life can be snatched away from us in a second—the ten-year-old girl reading her library book in bed when the druggies began shooting outside in the street and a stray bullet came through he wall of her house and hit her in the head. The far-away dam breaking. The pregnant-looking young woman in the supermarket with a dynamite bomb strapped … The list of such life-snatchers can be endless.

The key in the ignition. The heart flutter in our breast. The sneeze of a stranger….

That though brings me back to my biohazard class and Dr. Bodnar’s invention of a unique protective device. Yesterday at an awards dinner at Harvard University’s Sanders Theater, Dr. Bodnar received her 2009 in Nobel prize in Public Health.

According to numerous news articles and photos in the Daily Mail newspaper, Dr. Bodnar invented a brassiere which can double as a protective mask against germs or gas.

It lifts and separates and filters.

Yes, her brassiere detaches to become two gas masks—one for you and one for a friend.

'You have to be prepared all the time, at any place, at any moment, and practically every woman wears a bra,' she said, noting that a bra cup, no matter what size, is the perfect shape to fit over the human mouth and nose.

Here is a photo of Wolfgang Ketterle, 2001 winner of that other Nobel Prize for Physics, (I’m not sure what he invented) as the good sport steps up to breath through Dr. Bodnar’s bra.

FEMA does not issue such protective equipment to volunteers, and I doubt if Ginny has one of these in her lingerie drawer. So, what I’ll do, is at the next training class, I’ll ask all the pretty nurses if I can…

Is there a protective device for getting slapped?