BobbieOnFire

As I was thinking about which story I wanted to tell next, two things occurred to me. My first thought was that some firefighters might believe I’m ridiculing them by telling these stories. I hope you all don’t think that. I have so much affection and respect for all the firefighting professionals out there. My next concern is that those of you who aren’t in the fire/rescue profession are going to think that we’re all a bunch of idiots. I hope that isn’t true either. In my 40 plus years of firefighting I’ve witnessed the most professional performance and hard work that you can imagine. It’s just that one way of dealing with the stress and impact of what we see is to act a tad goofy when that high level of performance isn’t necessary.

This story is one such occurrence. To the public seeing our fire engine and rescue trucks driving down the road returning from a call, they just see their local heroes. (I hate that term by the way. More about that at a later date). What they don’t know is what is going on behind the scenes. This story is just a quick glance behind the scenes.

When you’re a firefighter, everyday when you go to work you have no idea what is going to happen. That’s why we do it. It’s the perfect job for those of us with short attention spans. Was the medical call we were just on boring? No worries, in 20 minutes you could be helping someone in a car accident or rappelling down a cliff to rescue a fallen hiker. But often, the call could be something goofy. This story is one of the many goofy things that continues to make me laugh.

Here is the audio story of one small incident that occurred during my nearly 30 days in NYC following the attacks on Sept 11, 2001.