Ice, ice baby....

Ok, all old school music aside, I want to be a little serious today. This post is about ICE — In Case of Emergency.

Dad and I were talking last week and I said something about ICE and how I had a few ICE numbers programed into my cell phone. HUUUUUH????? was his response. Nice. But mom had no clue what I was talking about either. SO it occurred to me others might not be aware of this as well.

REWIND: While working as a reporter in Hays a few years ago, I covered cops, and in the course of it, someone mentioned ICE. I didn't know what it was, so they explained it to me. The basic idea is many people carry a cell phone with them at all times. If (God forbid) something were to happen and I was to be unconscious or unable to communicate with emergency workers, they would grab my phone and go through my address book and find ICE. I would have an emergency contact or two or more dialed in.

Since I rarely carry a purse or wallet on me, but generally have my phone on me, this seemed to make good sense. SO.... I have ICE in my phone.

But do you? ;-)

"The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2006 that 1,600,000 emergency room patients could not provide contact information because they were incapacitated." — from the ICE sticker Web site.

And of course, everything you wanted to know about ICE on Wikipediasite.