Half Past Awesome

Do you ever wonder about the appropriate age to transition from one generational club to another? I do. We can all remember that guy who was, like, 26 and still lurching around high school bonfire parties. While he served a definite purpose (being of legal age), it always seemed rather awkward and creepy to have him hanging around. I am curious to know if he is now, at age 43, still buying the cheapest beer known to man for hormone ravaged teens. God, I hope not.

On the other end of the spectrum, I also dwell on when I’ll be allowed to join the crotchety old curmudgeon set. My application has been in for years, and, according to The Wife, was accepted from the moment we had kids. I’ll admit to righteous fury when one of her salon clients takes liberties with parking on the lawn as opposed to the driveway; even after widening the driveway several times, SOME folks seem hell-bent on destroying my attempts at a nice yard. I have angrily concluded that this is the result of trying to navigate destroyer-sized SUV’s while chatting merrily away on cell phones.

My descent into a crab-ass state of mind was no doubt aided by the fact that 90% of my neighbors are  grouchy old farmer dudes who love nothing more than bitching about the current state of affairs. On top of this heap resides Burl. Burl looks to be around 90 years old and drives up and down the state highway that is our road at a blistering 16mph. You can always tell Burl is coming from a long way off, because there will be an overwhelming din of car horns blaring from a stack of enraged drivers piled up behind him. This means nothing to him. He’s usually too busy eyeballing everyone else’s property for dogs he can shoot later on; in his mind he has NO DOUBT those damn dogs are running his cattle in the dead of night. Burl has absolutely no problem telling you about it, either. This man is both endlessly comical (to me) and insanely terrifying. Most people (particularly dog owners) loathe him which is how he likes it, thereby explaining why I am drawn to his presence. That, and the fact that he INSISTS on calling me Julio, no matter how many times I correct him.

It should be noted that the Dirtbag is also a prolific grump despite his relatively young age, and the look he puts forward is one that says “I will kill you if you come one step closer.” This is an extremely effective tool for keeping social interaction to a minimum. On one hand, I have found that behaving like an old coot can be incredibly rewarding, because when events inevitably go wrong in this life you can just snarl and tell anyone who will listen “I KNEW that would happen! Didn’t I tell you to never trust the media?!?” Also, it is a great excuse to shout at traffic, kids on the lawn, the meteorologist and rogue census takers. On the downside, it turns out nobody wants to spend much time with a person whose idea of a wild afternoon involves publicly and loudly broadcasting all the ways in which the youth of America steering this country towards Hell in a handbasket. That last statement is only subject to change when the room is FULL of angry old men, in which case it becomes mandatory discussion matter.

Turns out that most of these miserable old men generally can link their perpetual bad mood to an event, or series of events that soured them on the rest of life. Maybe they never moved off the farm in spite of a deep seated desire to travel outside the county lines. Perhaps they never DID ask that Italian exchange student on a date way back in high school. Or maybe their hip just hurts. But something I realized along the way is that this life has actually turned out pretty good, maybe even better than that, and my state of grouchiness is as seasonal as Missouri weather. I find that on balance people are reasonably fascinating. Most folks have a pretty interesting backstory if you can peel back all the layers of defense they’ve erected, especially the grouchy ones. As such, I’ll most likely keep on tolerating being called Julio by a man who is sure I am leading some sort of terrorist revolution out here in the country. And even if you catch me sitting in a lawn chair near the road pointing a hair dryer at passing speeders just to see how they react, chances are that if they stop for awhile and shoot the breeze, I’ll find them intriguing as well. They just better not park on the lawn.

The call was routine, inasmuch as a 911 call for a potential stroke victim can be. The station tones came through right after lunch, and we rolled out in a cacophony of lights and sirens, me grinning from ear to ear as I watched the mad-dog soccer moms swerving all over trying to get out of the way. Being on the east side, calls for stroke patients were relatively common, what with the abundance of seniors living out their sunset years on the “nicer” side of town.

We roll up and a large lady in a pink sweater is waving her hands around in some sort of psychotic interpretive dance, flagging us down as though it is inevitable that we will somehow shoot right on past her home. The captain on the rig, nearing retirement and caring very little about any interpersonal interaction, promptly occupies himself with paperwork in the cab and staring at rocks in the driveway. My partner and I grab the medical gear and head towards the house. Mrs. Hysterical-In-Pink steers us away from the house and points us towards a large portable building in the back yard. As she places her hands on the door handle, she turns and looks at me and my partner and says, in an oddly calm voice, “You have to promise me not to freak out.”

What the hell did we do? Mentally, of course, we were freaking out. What was in this shed? Was Grandma chained to the floor and found dead? I look back at my partner and we’re both wondering if this is a situation where police presence might be a good idea. We both look back to find the captain kicking stones in the street and daydreaming about slaughtering bass on the lake. Too late now, I suppose, to turn and run. And, of course, I am curious as hell as to what she has going on in there.

She opens the doors to reveal the largest S&M sex torture chamber that one might be able to fathom, complete with a leather and studded cross in the center, whips, chains, saddles, video equipment, candles, a microwave oven, and a polyvinyl covered bed across the back. The entire room was painted black with chicken wire and insulation on the walls and a couple of window-unit air conditioners. There was even what looked to be some sort of five gallon pail filled with prophylactic devices. Apparently, one can’t be too safe in this kind of environment. In the center of this room are two very large women in an unflattering menagerie of skin tight leather outfits with one very skinny old man wearing little more than a pair of cutoff shorts. As we stumble in, jaws dropped and eyeballs the size of saucers, he points to the woman with purple spiked hair and says “She is exhibiting classic stroke symptoms with drooping on one side of her face and slurred speech patterns”. Okay, I’m thinking, is this guy a doctor, because that would make this already madcap scenario THAT MUCH BETTER!

Our patient looks up at me and says “I bet you ain’t never seen nothing like this before, have ya?” In this, she is absolutely correct. As assessment begins, I assure her that no worries, discretion is key, no one is the wiser. She then looks at me as though maybe I am the one with the condition, and proceeds to tell me how she LOVES this kind of thing, “Ain’t no shame in my game”, and that things just got a little out of hand, that’s all. In between stealing glances at weapons of sexual intimidation on the wall and attempting to get a blood pressure reading on a super-sized dominatrix, my mind was reeling. There is no way that anyone is gonna believe this story, that this is happening right in someones backyard, right in town, right in the middle of the workday. This is so awesome.

About this time our captain stumbles in and, seeing the air conditioners on the wall and not much else due to the incredible darkness of the dungeon, asks out loud if these people have a working smoke detector in this outbuilding. We ALL stop what we are doing, turn our heads (patient included) and start breaking out in small fits of incredulous laughter. About ten seconds later, as he is idly pushing a swinging chain back and forth, his eyeballs adjust, and any semblance of discretion flies right out the door as he blurts “Oh GOD! OH MY GOD! I GET IT! OH! OH! OH! What the HELL am I touching? CRAP! Boys, I’m gonna wait outside for the ambulance to get here!” He then shimmied out of there as though his backside was literally on fire.

Our patient then looks up at me and says “Discrete, huh?” At this point I shrug my shoulders. What can I say to that? She has a point. After returning to the station and taking a bleach based shower, the whole situation got me to thinking: we all have our own versions of a hidden S&M chamber in our life. For some folks like The Wife, it is a closet obsession with all things Star Wars. Not too many people know that I harbor a secret job fantasy of being a steam locomotive engineer or a touring member of the Drive By Truckers (a favorite band). One of my unhinged neighbors is sitting on over 1.3 million records (45′s only, thank you very much) and spends his free time cataloging and listening to them on one of his 13 jukeboxes. We all have our little escapist havens. For some it just happens to occur while wearing leather and participating in stroke-inducing rituals. Ain’t no shame.

Yesterday one of our shop cats took the opportunity to have a batch of kittens while I was at the firehouse. This cat, commonly referred to as SkunkButt, is an industrious little beast. She knows full well that I was aware she wasn’t just “getting fat” and that soon our place would turn into a damn nursery; with that in mind, I was making a concerted effort to keep her silly, manipulative presence out of the house. So she waited until I was gone, then slinked around and tapped into my wife’s maternal instincts and snuck in to deliver her package. RIGHT UNDER OUR BED. Complete with all the “extras” that come with giving birth. And I was rewarded with the sobbing phone call from the woman I call my wife, but who is now referring to herself as a “grandmother”. Great.

This wonderful little addition to our under-bed carpeting brings to mind all of the times in my life that, despite the best laid plans, I have been shanked by fate. Tragically,the numbers are beginning to add up. Where one party sees a “beautiful” moment when life has begun anew, I know who is going to be left to clean up the mess. I might add that it’s a little more than disturbing that I am now being outmaneuvered by felines. Apparently, our bedroom is a much more appealing place to toss a litter than a shop full of tools and machinery.

As a parent, I should know that all plans are fluid and most likely mean diddly squat when it comes to execution, but somehow this is a new low. I can really appreciate the Dirtbags’ working theory that, yes, they ARE all out to get you. He’s the worlds’ greatest conspiracy theorist, which is one reason that the number of firearms he owns is a complete secret, even to his immediate family. Of course, the downside of this is that he is the first to blow a gasket when his world of order gets compromised by anyone, his own children included. On the other end of the spectrum, my world of chaos just seems to consume any sort of semblance of normalcy at every chance. One look in my office, and most folks think that I am in the process of moving. I’m a little suprised she didn’t have the kittens on my printer just to spite me.

How we react to the speed bumps that life throws our way is one way that character is defined. Each of us has the opportunity to act as a sail in the wind, constantly adjusting to fit the situation, just as each of us has the opportunity to shoot the bird at the wind and then act indignant when the mast swings around and clobbers us right in the face. I choose the latter, time and again with predictable results. It is not a path in which I take a considerable amount of pride, but like Skunkbutt’s maniacal instinct to give birth where it will piss me off the most, I, too, am driven by forces that baffle most people. What makes perfect sense to me in an absolute fit of manic productivity can often be construed as downright insane by my peers; take my idea of moving to Alaska on a whim as an example of said behavior.

I suppose at the end of the day we are fools to think that we truly are the masters of our fate, captains of our souls. That’s just a crock sold by romantics the world over. We may make choices, and we may influence events in our lives but at the end of the day we are nothing more than the results of those choices. There are times when I wish I had made better, more sane choices. And then there are days when I come home to a litter of kittens under my bed.

People outside of the fire business seem to have an insatiable curiosity when it comes to this line of work. When folks find out that you’re a fireman, there is a predictable litany of questions that run the gamut from “What’s it like to face potential threat of death regularly?” to “What is it that you guys actually DO all day?” to one of my all-time favorites “Oh, no, you’re not one of those guys. Are you sleeping with my wife?” After nine years as a career firefighter, I’ve come up with a similarly predictable roll-call of answers, ranging from “You don’t think about death that much unless you’re the coroner” to “You have no idea how much effort it takes to keep the wheels of bureaucracy squeaking along” to “Yes I AM one of those guys, and no I am NOT currently sleeping with your wife. That would be Eddie.”

Like any industry, ours has its share of dirtbags, family men, sleazy political types and salt of the earth folks. People go into the fire service for an equally varied number of reasons: the schedule, the security, the retirement, the chance to behave like adolescents, breaking stuff for a living. There are those who try to sell you the whole “hero” notion, but any fireman worth his or her salt will drop a Bullshit Flag with extreme prejudice at the mere mention of that term. We’re trained to do a job; like any job, the shine fades after several years and you begin to think more about being a cog in the giant wheel of government and less about what it is you do for a living.

I got into the fire service circuitously, like many, and was drawn to the adrenaline rush of racing trucks, running into unknown corridors and working ten days out of the month. And, at a time when I was a (relatively) young, newly single guy with nothing but chaos, I could count on two things: the fact that my worthless dog had probably taken a dump on my porch sometime in the night and that my new-found family at the firehouse would be there for the citizens, and for me, every third day. Unpredictable emergencies became, ironically enough, my anchor. There was no feeling quite like riding backwards as a rookie on old Truck 1. Heading towards the unknown emergency, lighting up downtown in red and white, siren wailing, it always felt as though we were rushing to a party of sorts. The rush was amplified by the fact that  the hosts might well be fueled up meth-heads torching a crack den as a form of entertainment. Along the way I’ve had the chance to be a part of situations as diverse as crazy white trash attacking one another with ax handles and weedeaters to helping deliver a baby in a liquor store. I’ve experienced tremendous sorrow at the loss of life of innocent children and the overwhelming joy of shocking an old lady back into this life and the accompanying look on her husbands face when he realized perhaps he wasn’t going to have to say goodbye like this. I’ve become more jaded about those who choose to use 911 as an entitlement taxi service and yet developed a little more empathy towards those whose poor choices were influenced and guided by the crappy choices their own parents made.

Perhaps the cynicism comes with a combination of age and governmental employment. Like any adrenaline or junkie’s rush, it takes more and more these days to get the fix. Any more, I want to hear the dispatcher’s voice ratchet up a notch or two when describing heavy smoke conditions, multiple calls on a house fire and possible persons trapped before I can really feel a true high navigating Ladder Truck 2 through the city’s northside. Usually this seems to occur with greater frequency late at night or very, very early, depending on your own perspective. As we wordlessly gear up and contemplate the unknown ahead, a comforting sense of calm overtakes me. Together with my family of co-workers, our humor gets darker as a coping tool for the macabre, our senses get heightened as I flip on the lights and the old familiar Federal-Q siren begins to wind it’s way up and down, alerting  no one in particular to our presence. We’re on our way to make a bad situation a little better for someone. And in the chaotic bath of red and white lights  I remember why I love this job.

Each Thursday that the crew of Ladder Truck 2-B is on duty, we train with the Hazardous Materials Team down at Fire Station #12. This training lasts most of the day, and while there is always the threat of learning new and valuable techniques for dealing with spills, releases and the mayhem that makes up the world of HazMat, my capability to stay focused is pushed to its limits within moments of each class. I would wager that I have the attention span of a fly.

This week, our class topic was thus: Evidence Collection Techniques for Weapons of Mass Destruction Incidents. I even yawned while typing that last sentence. I can’t fault our instructors; both were well versed on the topic, comedic at times and tried their level best to make a terminally boring subject somewhat interesting.  And I coped in the only way I know how: liberal application of caffeine at every opportunity.

This usually entails a pot or two of coffee before the day really gets going and some more later on, just for good measure.  Combining the coffee with a distinct lack of sleep, I was already dancing close to a fit when all the caffeine came on board, three minutes into class. Despite the mad jitters that allow my mind to wander all over the map and think of new ways to make a subject entertaining, it wasn’t long before the need hit…….I had to ramp this rush up even further if I was to make it to lunch.

Enter my new nemesis: Chinese Rocket Fuel energy drink, chock full of enough really bad ingredients to gag a hyped up hyena. From what research I’ve done (read: very little), this drink may well have been either banned or the company has gone out of business. This would explain why you can buy, like, six for a dollar. And, firemen being the cheapsters they are, have figured out a way to hawk this junk out of their stations for a profit. They just lie in wait till some jonesing fool like me needs a fix to make it through training days.

The results were predictably awful.

One of the side effects of 278% of your RDA of Vitamin B6 is NOT an ability to focus, despite my attempts to shoot Clint Eastwood-style squints at the projected data stream. As we age, I am realizing the ability to multi-task is truly the realm of teenagers and vigilant lesser mammals who are constantly under the threat of predation. This is precisely why I can’t text for speed…..I actually spell out all of the words out of respect for the institution of spelling (see previous essay on said subject). But I digress.

I began to detect unique new powers as the effects of the Chinese Rocket Fuel began to take hold of my physical being. For one thing I could distinctly feel one eye wandering in a different direction, thereby allowing me to observe my comatose classmates while simultaneously keeping an eye on a slide show about handling rogue FBI CSI-types. This proved distracting, to say the least. My eyeballs actually began to hurt. I would need to approach this new talent with caution. As the lecture droned on, I also noticed that I had a new ability to tap my foot several thousand times without interruption. A twitch began to erupt from one side of my face and it took a moment of deep breathing to convince myself that, no, I wasn’t having a stroke; this is merely one of many “benefits” of loading up on this new elixir. I began shouting out answers to quiet questions and then affirming my correct response with a “HELL YES, I’M RIGHT!!” The instructors decided to break early for lunch, no doubt to begin planning an assault on my new-found HazMat brilliance. Paranoia may also be a side effect.

There is a very good reason (beyond legal boundaries) why I stay away from addictive mind-altering substances and this reason was highlighted with clarity as my eyebrows began to shoot off in different directions with each jarring turn my mind made. Some folks cannot handle the ride. I’m fine with that particular part; it’s the crash that tears me into a million pieces. That, and physically I can’t handle the train wreck I become as I get older. Only a select few, like Keith Richards, can actually survive killing themselves. What Chinese Rocket Fuel doesn’t tell you on the can is that while it may launch you into outer space for a short time, it most certainly does NOT come with a parachute for re-entry. And I dropped from orbit like a stone. Hours later I pulled myself out of the station by my fingers with no recollection of any events that may or may not have occurred during the previous span of time.

Moral of the story? It truly sucks getting older. That, and stay away from banned, retina-rattling energy drinks unless you happen to be Keith Richards.

A big slice of sugar-coated Midwestern pie dropped into my lap today. I was taking the Heathens to school when we passed by a neighbors’ hobby farm; the kind with one or two of each of breed and variety of livestock, all co-mingling like some kids’ utopian storybook. Today, one of the goats was on the wrong side of the fence and meandering around the two lane county road, occasionally bashing in the fence with her head trying to return to her homestead. I thought, “Let’s not be a total dirtbag about this situation”, maybe try and do the right thing. The right thing being to let the neighbor know he’s got a renegade pet awaiting a sure death by some texting teen driver.

This presents a rather unique dilemma. When I say “neighbor”, I mean he’s a couple miles down the road and not one I know at all. And out in these parts, you go strolling onto someones property, one of two factors needs to be in play: either you’re a friend or acquaintance or you’ve got a warrant. If neither of these conditions are met, there is a more-than-fair chance you will be met by the business end of a firearm. And I don’t exactly look like a Girl Scout selling cookies, so I need to weigh options.

I notice a Ford Aerostar minivan, beat nine ways to hell in the driveway….not a good sign. There are two bumper stickers, one saying “If you think you’re so special, YOU try walking on water” and another one extolling Dale Earnhardt’s virtues as the biggest ass-kicker of all time. So the property occupant is both God AND Dale-fearing……this points to an extremely high likelihood of there being a significant number of firearms already being trained on my wife’s vehicle, which isn’t helping because, unlike my truck, this rig could be construed as some sort of yuppie / hippie wagon. If I had a gambler’s instincts they would be screaming something along the lines of  “Let the goat take her chances, fool! Run!” But I also sense an opportunity to witness, or maybe even be a part of, chaos so of course, I’m drawn to it.

Knocking on the door, I take the stance we do on medical calls on the north side of town, to the side of the doorway, just in case some buckshot is the answer. The nerves are on hyper-alert at this point…I love it. The door is swung open with a vengeance to reveal a wild eyed man about my age, hair looking as though he was busy licking a light socket when I interrupted his reverie. Clearly a man of the trades, his drywall covered pants and torn apart Journey shirt indicated to me that he was not someone to be trifled with. The still-inflated Santa ornament in the yard really should have been the tip-off that I was entering a realm where normal paradigms were to be ignored completely. I took up an incredibly manly stance and said, “Sir, not to bother you, but you’ve got a goat running amuck out here in the road. Thought you might want to know.”

He looked at me for a second as though I had just offered him a job as an astronaut, then his reality came around. He mutters something like, “Crap, Sugar got out again. HONEY! SUGAR GOT OUT AGAIN! Jesus, I am sick of this horseshit!” That’s not the kind of statement that really lends itself to a response, so it got awkward for the briefest of moments, and then I offered to help get Sugar back onto Madman Acres. He again looked at me quizically like the second statement was nuttier than the first, and blurted out, finally, “No, no. I got it. That goddamn Sugar. I really hate that goat. She does this shit all the time. Damn her. Damn her to hell.” A part of me feared for the goats’ well being, both when this psycho-billy got his hands on her and, after that last comment, her eternal soul.

I then backed out of the driveway so as to never lose eye contact with my new acquaintance. This is the sort of chance encounter few of us get to witness. I’m a bit experienced in this regard, as the fire station I work out of services this level of clientele almost exclusively, making me something of an expert. Despite this near daily interaction, it never gets old, nor does it fail to amuse me; I just had no idea it ALSO was living right around the corner from our place.

Poor goat. I can only hope that she’s an Earnhardt fan.