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.