First Degree vs. Third Degree

This week I was rocking super cute flats . . . that tried to eat my heels. It's part of the Torture of the Toes season. My feet are rebelling against the closed-toe footwear after their flip-flop freedom of summer. However, my flats are tired of spending their days cooped up in a dark closet and are vamping up to fight their own battle of belonging. I had to wear band aids on my heels for two days in a row. Even showering was painful. When the water would hit my war wounds, I would have to contort my body so that I could get clean without my heels being exposed to the shower stream. (In case you were wondering, I was not very successful at this.)

I learned at my first-aid training a couple of weeks ago, that blisters are actually burns. Your foot rubs up against the shoe, therefore creating friction and heat which is essentially burning your skin. When your skin is red and aggravated, it is a first degree burn. When that aggravation turns into a blister, it has now become a second or in some really terrible cases, a third degree burn. This is what lead me to my next segment of Pam-sense. Why are third-degree burns worse than first degree burns, but first degree murder is worse than third-degree murder? Doesn't that seem a little inconsistent?

This would be a great time to admit that this question was actually brought up by a couple of teachers at my school. They wanted me to blog about it at the time, but I write my blogs based on a topic that is burning my brain. (Yes, that pun was completely intended.) So, when I got my nasty blisters on my innocent little heels, I thought that now was the time to address this issue.

Let's compare these degrees of degrees with a table because they reek of organization and I love that.

	Burns	Murder
First	-Injures only the tops layers of skin -Healed skin will not scar	-Super bad -To kill with malice -Premeditated and deliberate.
Third	-Super painful -Destroys all layers of skin -Require emergency medical treatment	-Not premeditated or deliberate -Due to inherently dangerous acts

So, I am confused. Why did these names . . . get these names, when they mean the opposite? Wouldn't it have made more sense for the medical community to have a little powwow with the criminal justice community and work out their differences?

I bet I know what happened. I bet a lady doctor was married to a male detective during prehistoric times. They were in charge of labeling important terms for the first edition text book that would soon be chiseled out of limestone when an argument broke out about who's turn it was was to prepare the mastodon for dinner. Lady Doctor complained that she just skinned the saber-toothed tiger the other day. Man Detective whined about how he finally mounted the woolly mammoth head in their cave after freezing the meat in Ziploc baggies. They were at an impasse. Finally, they stormed out of their caves each to write out their own text. And the rest as they say, is history.

I mean, it's just a theory.