Tidal Waves

It has been a total whirlwind. Wake to work to class to calls to sleep to wake to work and the cycle goes on and on, cramming food and studying in whenever I have enough time to come up for air. It's all so exciting and the bonds that have formed already in EMT class have reaffirmed my belief in myself and my abilities. Fire school tends to crush my spirit little by little because it's all guys and there is so much posturing that goes on. I end up judging myself harshly and too much, and sizing myself up to impossible standards. With the EMT classes, people are younger and less set in trenchant ideas of who should be able to do what, and plus, most of the guys in the class want to be firefighters someday and I think I've earned their respect simply by already being one. Plus I act goofy as hell and can usually answer all the questions, and my natural leadership abilities are really taking center stage. Yesterday we learned how to use the various lifting and moving equipment, one of which was a stair chair. A stair chair is a really rugged chair that has tracks on the back of it. It's designed to be like a human dolly, and you can basically roll the patient down a set of stairs via the tracks if you have them rolled back toward the head, like a dolly. It is a pretty heavy piece of equipment but it's designed so that when you're using it right, moving somebody up and down stairs is simple. We took our instructor down three flights in different groups, and when we got to the bottom he wanted us to do it again. "Ok, let's get this thing back up!" he said, looking at the chair. Without thinking I went up to it, broke it down, hoisted it up into my arms and started walking up the stairs with the rest of the class behind me. My instructor just said, "ok then." Someone in the class said "geez, muscles!" and one of the guys whistled at me. I was telling mom that I think being on the FD and especially the academy has conditioned me to just springing into action with confidence before one of the guys does. The constant need to prove myself. The constant need to show that I can do anything they can do, better......

On my way back into town on Tuesday night I was heading South on 58 and saw our main engine, 41, barreling toward me. I pulled over and 41 stopped in front of Hall Auditorium so I got out and geared up. Then our aerial and rescue trucks arrived and I asked Mark what was going on. He didn't know. People from both shifts started showing up to the call, and I overheard something about an extinguishing system going off. Two of our guys packed up and went in on air and I started asking questions. "Do you know what a Halon system is?" The assistant chief asked me. "It's an oxygen exclusion extinguishing system used for energized electrical equipment." The guys standing around looked at me. "Somebody read the book," Joe said, looking at me. They chuckled. I beamed. Why am I such a geek? I definitely felt like Anne's twin in that moment, for both of our eagerness to prove not just that we have the brawn but that we have the brains to make the brawn useful.

At the end of the call my Lt., Shawn, recruited me to help him put the SCBAs back together. After I washed the regulators I recruited a couple of the other rookies to help me reconnect everything. I had to remind one of them to test it out before putting it back on the truck, and what to look for! I feel sleazy blowing my own horn, but it was such a vindicating feeling. As I was taking the last pack back into the bay, one of the other lieutenants said to no one in particular, "Man, we got a girl on Carlyle and we can't get her to do anything... and here's Emily doing it all!" I couldn't suppress the grin. I was just glad that I had my back to them and was halfway out the door and could feign ignorance that the comment was even made.

I love this job.