What do firefighters do in their spare time?

I started my career as a volunteer in Fairfax County, Virginia.  Many of us who now reside and work outside of Fairfax will sarcastically call it "The Kingdom of Fairfax", but that's usually because we're jealous.  First of all, they have a deep tax base in Fairfax County so that means they get good pay and lots of cool toys.  Second of all, they have the FEMA Task Force that travels all over the world truly saving people when most of us save people from their dread case of the sniffles.  Third of all, closely related to my second point, they are actually known the world over, primarily because of their FEMA Task Force.

I started volunteering at a TROT station.  TROT means the folks who work there have fancy certifications in technical and confined space rescue.  Those of us out in the country crawl into confined spaces without the fancy certifications or the special equipment, but generally we're not considered the "real deal" until we can operate like a true TROT certified team; often with good reason if we look at a cave-in that happened in our neck of the woods a few years ago.  It was a charlie foxtrot until Fairfax showed up, or so I hear.  Anyway, I rode with "A" shift at this station full of TROT certified Bad-Asses.  This shift was notorious for being anti-volunteer, but took me under their wing for some reason.  I think, secretly, they were trying to marry off the last single guy on their shift by welcoming me.  They probably didn't want anyone at the dinner table who was a reminder of the possibility of having sex on a regular basis because that screwed up their group complaining of how their wives never put out anymore.  ("Yeah, well when is the last time you paid her attention other than in an attempt to get laid?" I would reply.) Anyway, they welcomed me to their crew, and for that, I will be forever grateful because I learned quite a bit from this group of folks, all of whom happened to be men, AND I had the time of my life doing it.

Firefighters, EMTs and Paramedics can be rednecks, or learned, or a combination of both, as in the case of a certain Captain who is stationed in the southern end of Fairfax County.  You know who you are.....Dave.  It's always interesting to hear what they do on their days off.  Many of them fish, (my husband swears those folks are always on "B" shift) some are carpenters or painters, hunters, photographers, instructors, and some of them are volunteer firefighters in other counties.  Yup, they get off work, drive 50 miles home, where they can actually afford to live on their decent-but-not-high-enough-to-live-in-the-county-they-work salaries, and do some more of what they just did for 24 hours but for free.  Their hope, usually, is to "catch some fire" but usually they catch something else in a barf bag, or at least that's what the statistics would indicate.

Seriously-how and why?  When I get off my 24 hour shift, I do not want to go and do this again, especially for free.  And before you get on your high horse about giving unto others, I volunteered for years out here in the country and gave up Christmas and wine drinking on Friday nights just so I could help my neighbors in need and asked nothing in return.  Some folks just can't get enough of this stuff, others are willing to wade through all kinds of crap just in the hope of catching fire, others probably want to "help people" (seriously?  volunteer in a soup kitchen.) and others just don't have any other interests, or are looking to get away from their spouses, maybe.

I am full of a mixture of feelings of awe and "are you out of your cotton-pickin' mind?"  But thank goodness for people like that because if they didn't volunteer, more career staff would be needed (and is needed anyway) and then the rich folks who write their polo-playing and dressage horse farms off on their taxes, might actually have to pay more taxes in order to afford more firefighter/paramedics.  But I will spare you from my Union-ist political rants, for now, anyway.  And also, if it weren't for them, the caliber of many volunteer companies wouldn't be as proficient.  Many volunteers get offended by this, but if you only do ANY activity a few hours a week, in your spare time, how good can you be?  There are a lot of volunteers who will spend huge amounts of time running calls and training and are therefore, quite good at it.  But if you don't fall into that category, you probably are telling yourself you're better than you actually are.

So, on the one hand, because the fact that you who work and volunteer in fire and rescue makes me feel bad about my comparative lack of commitment, I want to tell you, "Oh for god's sake, get a life."  But on the other hand, since I rely on you because I live in an area where I may or may not get good help unless a proficient volunteer shows up, I thank heavens that you don't have any other life!  If you MUST take up fishing as a hobby, can I interest you in the pond in my backyard?  

Living the dream

Being a paramedic was on my bucket list.  Back when I made my bucket list, no one called it a bucket list. I wrote, "list of things I want to do before I die" which, is of course, synonymous with bucket list, but much wordier.  And that, is me-I will find the wordiest way to say anything, so blogging is the perfect hobby for me.  By writing it down and posting it, I feel important which is way better than the method I've been employing up till recently which is to talk about the aspects of my work that I find interesting, hilarious, ridiculous, moving, disgusting, tough, and merely stupid.  However, many of my listeners, i.e., my family, my friends, other folks in line at Wal-Mart, might not WANT to hear about every detail of what working in the fire service is like.  But if you found your way to this blog, well, you asked for it.

When I made out my bucket list, I only had one kid.  I now have three and my youngest is 16, and my oldest is now 22.  Obviously, I made my list awhile ago.  I've been doing this for a fair amount of time, but there are old geezers who have been at it much longer than I have.  Maybe they should have retired by now, but the same quality that makes us very good at what we do also keeps us from leaving when we should have said, "Adios" perhaps years ago.  Some call it tenacity.  My husband calls it stubbornness.

I called this blog "Living the dream" because it's something we, along with the cops we often cross paths with, will say in response to, "How're you doing?"  It's meant to be sarcastic to the listener, but secretly most of us mean it. It's like when you're ten years old and really, you're too old to be into pretending anymore, but you're not ready to give up your "cops and robbers" roleplaying.  You act all cool and nonchalant on the outside like, "yeah, this stuff, I could take it or leave it" when actually, on the inside, you can't wait for another chance to jump into the heat of the moment.  Those of you in this line of work know exactly what I'm talking about.

We don't call ourselves heroes, and in the adult parts of our brains, we don't feel comfortable when other people describe us that way. But secretly, in the part of our brain that fantasizes about winning the lottery, having sex with the hottest person we can conjure, or being promoted to the "big dog" position, we ruminate on being heroes.  Because it's kinda cool in the same manner that being a rich, sex-having with-only-gorgeous-people-while-issuing-orders-to-everyone-below-us, bad- ass is cool.

But the reality is, we rarely are heroes in the "heroic" sense.  Few of us will pull children from burning buildings.  Most of us will transport elderly people with difficulty breathing, ten times a day.  That's not to say we don't have the opportunity to act in a heroic fashion, because after all, if you weigh 350 pounds and you see a woman who weighs 135 pounds about to pull you from the ambulance, in the cot that is suspended three feet above the ground, you hope for sure that she at least has heroic strength.  But usually, our opportunities to be heroes manifest themselves in the day to day chance to just be nice to people who can oftentimes be annoying as all hell.

Everyone outside of the fire service, and the police force, thinks that if a person calls for an ambulance, or a fire truck, that person is just a really sane and nice person who desperately needs help.  Not true. We have a saying that 10% of the population generates 90% of the calls.  Most of these folks probably have disease processes and suffer from the affliction of being old as dirt, but a good many of them just suffer from idiocy.  They've been coughing for 3 days and decide at three in the morning, on the 4th day, that having their spouses drive them to the hospital, or later in the day, to their primary physician, is not worth the wait.  This is a true emergency that only ambulance personnel can handle.  This constitutes a good many of our calls.  Before you get your tax paying balls in an uproar, relax because if you want us ready at a moment's notice for your true emergency, we have to be ready at a moment's notice for your idiot neighbor's pseudo emergency  because no one has come up with a test yet to divide the 911 abusers from the legitimate people who truly need our assistance.  So guess what, your taxes have to pay us to be at everyone's beck and call.

I realize I sound cynical and in some ways I am, but presently I am able to check my cynicism long enough to still be compassionate to the overwhelming majority of my patients and my co-workers, for that matter.  When the dramatic lady whose vitals are indicating she is JUST FINE is clutching at her oxygen mask because she thinks I'm going to remove it, and I want to smack her silly, yet I manage to reassure her benignly that no one is going to take her precious oxygen away, when I really want to tell her to get a grip for Christ's sake, then I know I've got at least a few more years left in this career.  A healthy dose of cynicism, or put another way, distance, helps to keep us from getting roped into someone else's drama, or emergency, so that we can remain clear headed.  Or that's what I keep telling myself....

But seriously, this line of work is hugely entertaining and rewarding.  How many of you, other than farmers and zookeepers, can say that crossing paths with farm animals, even inside people's homes, is part of your job description?  How many of you can say that you know of people who keep 50 years worth of trash lined on the sides of every room in their homes and you haven't even watched "Hoarders" on TV?  We don't swap gossip at the water fountain, but we will at the side of a highway while shoveling kitty litter onto the fuel leaking out of the massive tank of the 18 wheeler that just swerved to avoid a deer and instead plowed a huge swath of earth bigger than your house while destroying the truck, and the driver's job, in the process.

We love telling our "war stories" which you may actually find entertaining whether you're in this line or work or not.  My intent is to share my war stories, the moving ones, the ones where I sound/look/act like an idiot, the unbelievable, the horrible and the hilarious ones.  I hope you find it as entertaining as I do.