Last week I joined a local volunteer rescue squad. There are only certain things I'm allowed to do at this point, of course, but they still gave me the uniform shirt to wear. And a patch! I am very proud of my patch.

What is it about patches that make things seem official? You take an ordinary blue button-up shirt and slap a big patch on the shoulder and suddenly people trust you with their lives. This amuses me, especially since I am currently struggling just to operate the stretcher. (Harder than it looks, I'm just saying...) What's more, I'm pretty sure what the patch says doesn't even matter. You could be wearing a fucking Pinewood Derby patch and people would be perfectly fine with you defibrillating their loved one. "I'm sure he knows what he's doing," they think. "He's got a patch."