I came across an example of the 'protective black humour' used by particular sectors not long ago. Early in the morning I was driving from Newcastle to Sydney and saw a car at the side of the freeway with a bloke leaning over another and putting him in the 'coma' position. I pulled up and oriented the bullbar into the traffic to give us a 'shelter' from the traffic and helped out; within a few seconds we were both into CPR. He'd had a mobie phone and had already rung for an ambulance, which arrived a couple of minutes later.

The ambos commented, as they got the oxygen into the patient, "The frogs will be here in about a minute." 90 seconds later a chopper descended onto the median strip and blokes in blue flight overalls raced over and took over from all of us. It was all to no avail; the EC trace was flat.

I later asked a friend, the ambo who'd given me my most recent courses in first aid training, why the ambos had called the chopper paramedics "frogs".
"Oh", he replied, "everything they touch croaks!"

I did smile.
Cheers, Rowan