the rule of three's

it's called the rule of three's

three minutes without air
three days without water
three weeks without food

violate any of those three rules and you die.

three weeks without food
everyone knew Geroge. he was a older first nations man who mostly drank cooking wine to get high. he had been a fixture for years in the downtown core. no one knew his age, just that he was old and had lived along on Hastings street for many years.
then he started getting into doing crack. he lost weight because he would forget to eat in his quest for that high. people started buying him meals when they saw him, which was more and more infrequently.
then no one saw him for a couple of months. word on the street was that he had found some dealer's stash and was going into hiding to smoke it all himself.
He was found in a unused container along some back road in Surrey. the coroner stated that the cause of death was most likely due to starvation induced by drug addiction.

three days without water
it was during the rare super hat spell we had last summer. the temperature that day had reached a almost unheard of 108 degrees. night time would see it cool to 104. many people had trouble coping with the heat and older people and very young children were at the greatest risk. also the homeless and those on the street. it was during that week that I gave out over a hundred bottles of water. one young man and his girlfriend stand out though.
I watched as he made his way to a traffic island in the middle of a very busy street. his handmade sign asked for help of anykind. he didnt look that well so I pulled the car around to give him some water. he culd barely thank me before downing it as fast as he could. "could I have one for my girlfriiend?" he asked. "we havent any water for a couple of days now."
I asked him where his girlfriend was and he said around the corner. I had him climb into the car and gave him another bottle. we found her laying in the shade. almost unconsious. it took four bottles to get her to be able to talk. I left them a dozen bottles and told them where they could go to get help. they had run away together from some small town in the mid-west a few weeks ago. they had found travel on the road and the street a lot harder than they anticipated.

three minutes without air
they had sat around smoking crack in a large hookah with old gas mask attached to the ends of the hoses. this concentrates the effects of the smoke. these were college kids partying and thinking they were in control of things. one of the young guys fell asleep while smoking and his friends thought it would be funny to leave the mask on him. someone else thought it was also funny to put a glass over the bowl of the pipe to shut off the air flow. they were all terribly high and soon forgot about their little prank.
being in a unconsious state from the concetration of smoke from the burning crack, he suffocated sitting there in the living room of the small apartment. manslaughter charges were laid against his 'friends'. their trial comes up in a few months. they are expected to pelad 'guilty'.

three minutes without air
three days without water
three weeks without food

these are the rules for life.