Chris Jacobson: Tourist Firefighter

Today’s episode is based on something that my daughters said to me a week or two ago.  Considering the event’s in Dallas this last week, the subject matter seems apropos. 

Last week my oldest daughter saw a firetruck as we were returning home after a soccer tournament.  She asked a question about when I went firefighting. 

A little backstory is probably in order.  My father-in-law Mick was a fire chief for a number of years and was a firefighter in his home town for decades.  He trained new firefighters and also fought wildfires all over the western states during the summers.  A few years ago Mick asked if I would like to get certified and help out during the summer.  I swallowed hard and nervously accepted the offer.  I helped my father-in-law fight fires for one summer and the way kids schedules and jobs work, it was the only summer I would fight wildfires with Mick. 

So my daughter asked “do you remember the time you were a fireman?”

“Of course I do sweetheart, I missed you girls very much.”  I responded. We talked about it for a little while, she asked, I answered, until finally she asked if I would ever do it again.  “Probably not,” I told her, “I’m getting too old and I would miss you girls.”  I elected not to tell her that most jobs don’t appreciate you taking three month breaks every summer.  My job at the time allowed me to do it, but added that the next time would be my retirement, message received. 

“Good” she said.  “I don’t want you to go be a fireman anymore.”

We talked about her not wanting me to go and I found out that she had been afraid when I left.  I told her that I had been afraid, too, but that Poppy needed the help.

The conversation turned to Mick, or “Poppy” as my daughter calls him.  We discussed that Poppy is a bona fide hero.  That Poppy had helped people, saved their homes and even protected their lives.   We said that despite the fact that he is a huge goofball, other firefighters really look up to him.  I got to see it first-hand a couple of times.  When Chief Poppy walks onto a scene, the other firefighters just sense that he knows what he’s talking about.  On a side note, Poppy also uses this trust in the real world, which is why my kids believe that his mustache is an 'angry caterpillar' and God knows what else. 

The conversation had me reflecting on the summer I spent firefighting.  For a little while, I got to live out a childhood dream.  Like anything else, there are things you don’t hear about it, like every meal on the site is two thousand calories or that the fire retardant pants you wear will take so much hair off your legs you wind up looking like an eight year old from the waist down.  They don’t tell you about the smell your clothes take on after two straight weeks of limited outfit changes and no washing machine.  All in all, it was great.  I wasn’t a firefighter per se, I was more like a firefighting tourist.  Frankly, it was as close enough to the real thing as I need.

All of this seems scattered, I’m sure, but it really isn’t.  Here’s the point, girls.  There are tons of heroes in this world.  Your mom is a hero for keeping our house together despite our crazy schedule.  Your teachers are heroes for the time and patience they show as they try to jump start the grey matter between your ears.  But there is another kind of hero, too.  Those are the bona fide kind.  These are the people who put themselves in harm’s way to make your lives better or safer.  I got to work with some of these types of heroes for a summer.  They enjoy what they do, sure, they talk about it with a pride that most people dream of having in their jobs.  They laugh in a way I’ve never seen people laugh while they work.  It’s hard to put a finger on but I suppose if I were to try, I’d say it has something to do with knowing your job makes it very easy to sleep at night.  The double whammy of knowing that you’re helping people and that you have nothing left in the tank after a work day.  It’s enviable to love your job the way they do, but it entails a lot.  It’s physically demanding, it’s mentally draining, its long hours, it’s being away from your family and it’s doing all of it while working a job that has its fair share of peril.  Firemen, police men, EMTs, soldiers, and plenty of others give gifts to you that it is impossible to repay.  The point is this, “just don’t forget it”.  When you see a firefighter or a police man, say ‘thank you’ or at least give them a smile, I bet they could use it.   

Macy and Some Birds and Some Bees and a Head Full of Gray

I have long since assumed that the child of mine that will cost me the most hair will be Macy.  She is adventurous, brazen, curious and more than most kids, is willing to accept the punishment if the joke is funny enough.  An example this last point happened just yesterday morning.  Macy woke up earlier than the rest of the house.  I’m assuming that her thought process went something like this.  “Why is everyone sleeping?  Who is least likely to kill me if I wake them up?  I wonder what he will make me for breakfast.”  With that, she crawled next to my bed and found my pajama clad posterior sticking out from under the covers and gave it a firm slap.  I shot out of bed to find her giggling into her hand under the side of my bed.  Giving her the “she’s not a closet serial killer” benefit of the doubt, I see her as a little girl who is destined to grey what hair I have left on my balding head. 

All of that being said this is not about a slightly reddened hind quarters or a lack of sleep.   It’s about something much, much worse for my hairline.  Macy, fresh out of kindergarten, asked a question that most dads don’t want to hear from a girl twice her age.  It was asked in this awkward kind of way that said that she didn’t’ know what she was asking or what it would do to my soul.  I was getting Macy into the minivan after a post soccer season party and she asked, in an innocent voice as the van door began to slide closed, “Daddy, before you have a baby do you have to sex mommy?”

The door continued to close and I physically saw my dropped jaw in the window reflection.  I’ll chalk that up to something else I saw as just an expression.  My jaw dropped, completely.  I have always seen myself as someone who thinks on their feet.  I regathered myself for a moment and scrambled for something to say.  I pushed the button to re-open the van door and found a curious little girl waiting behind it.  My exact response went like this, “Well, sweetheart, where in the hell did you hear that?”.

Parenting 101, if you have nothing to say, lash out.  Punctuate it with a mid-level kid level swear word for effect and then close the door rapidly.  Lash out, check.  Mid-level swearing, check.  Door closed…damn.  The only change in the van was the fact that my eldest’ s attention went from some trinket she had received at the party to trained perfectly on my next words. 

I repeated my former statement, in a softer tone, at the car in general.  “Where did you hear that?  Was it at school?”

“No”, she answered reluctantly, “It was (The name of the junior sex ed teacher has been changed to protect her from Macy’s uncles) Cinnamon.  She told me at Avery’s birthday party.”

Avery rose in her seat looking confused, angry and right at Macy.  I saw a window to divide and conquer. 

“Avery,” I asked, “did you know about this?”

Before Avery could offer her vehement denial, Macy piped up proudly, “No it was just me and (insert two other girl’s names here).”

As far as I could tell the disease was contained to one set of local ears and two other pairs that I had no control over.  I quickly went from father to outbreak prevention specialist.  

My wife gave me a look as if to say "good luck with this one, champ.", arms crossed and cocked smile. She wasn't stepping to save me.  At least not yet.  

What came out of me was somehow both convoluted and vanilla.  To paraphrase, "Well, um, sweetheart, when to parents love each other very much, it's like this, see, it was just stuff you hear at a birthday party, geez, well Mommy and Daddy, you're too young to be asking...." the last part of whatever I was saying was drowned out and eventually deafened by the automatic sliding door.  The trump card I had on my wife was the fact that we came in separate vehicles and the kids were piled into hers.  Unfortunately, the reprieve was a mere two blocks.  

Truth be told, when we got home we had a very mature conversation with our eldest two children.  We explained that 'what she heard was correct, but it isn't time to learn about it just yet.  It's a conversation for later, but that we love them very much.

So here it is girls, over the next forty or fifty years, I will be making a lot of jokes about how boys are off limits and that I'll sharpen my gun in preparation for any gentleman callers.  I'll say you can't date until you get through college and any boy dumb enough to try to kiss you will have the full force of Poppy, your uncles and yours truly to deal with.  That, my ladies, is what you call a show.  It's because I love you very much and I will never think that there is a special someone quite special enough for you.  I'm biased, sure, but you three are pretty amazing and deserve the best.  If you take anything from this story, it's just that the question Macy asked is valid, just premature, ask me again in twenty years if they have phones in the convent.

Went up a Boy and Crapped Down a Mountain

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about a race I was training for and my daughters wondering “if it’s so hard, why do I do it?”.  This past Sunday, I ran the marathon and I was left with the same question.

“If it’s so hard, why do it?”

The training for this marathon had not gone particularly well, but I held the attitude, 'I’ve paid for the race, I’ve done the training, might as well run'.  I packed my bag with everything I could possible need and headed to my sister’s house in Denver for the night.  Because of the location of the race, we would have to get up at a god awful 2:30 in the morning to get there in time so we decided to have an early dinner and go to bed. 

For those not dumb enough to endeavor into marathon running, it is common practice to “carb load” the night before a race, which for me is generally a pasta dish, no red sauce, murders the ol tum-tum.  I came up with the brilliant plan to have ramen, and my sister found a place that was ramen/ ping pong themed.   Did that combo send any red flags up?  Nope, let’s eat.  Fast forward to midnight.  The scene is my wife and sister both sound asleep while I create a laundry list of mistakes on my porcelain throne.  I finally got back to sleep, but I was starting to panic about my readiness for my run. 

The next morning, I paid my throne another visit, gulped a strong cup of coffee, a half a bagel, a banana and a larger than prescribed dose of Pepto.  Breakfast of champions.  We loaded into the car and made our way to the starting line.

Getting to the start required a shuttle and for me to leave my wife as she wasn’t running and my sister as she was running a half-marathon and therefore started a little later.  I took a seat at the back of the bus and tried to relax, a feat made impossible by my bus mates.  For me, when running a race, it is relaxing to find people that are approximately in the same condition as me, slightly pear shaped, a little older and uncomfortable with what we are about to do.  This bus was nothing like that.  My co-passengers, we’ll call them Lance, Zeke and Turbo, all had a one upmanship that was inspired.  One talked about “bonking” and only running a 6:30 minute mile, the next talked about a Pike’s Peak challenge where you run a marathon route to the top of the peak twice in two days and the third, Turbo’s story, is that he is running this marathon as a warm up for a 120 miler he’d be doing the next week.  The thing about these guys, is that they weren’t bragging.  I think they were that good, which made me feel that bad.  I got off the bus perfectly ready to go home. 

I was lucky enough to meet up with a couple of friends of mine at the start.  They are very funny people and spending a few minutes with them took my mind off the bus ride and the ramen playing ping pong in my intestines.  The bus ride would not return, the ramen would. 

As the race started it became apparent the jostling of the run was going to make what was on my insides want to make its way outside.  I made pit stops in at least four of the rest stops in the first half of the marathon, each stop being more horrific than the last.  I suppose one of the beautiful things about being a quick runner would be beating twelve hundred people to the outhouses, a luxury I will most likely never understand.  By the time I reached the thirteen mile marker, my body had exercised the ping pong demons and most of the liquids I would have enjoyed in the race.

    

The second half of the race was more or less uneventful but suffice it to say, I was more dehydrated than I would have normally been on a race like this.  The temperature rose to 85 degrees.  Another perk of being fast would have finishing before the sun got through the clouds, but no such luck. I’ve heard it said that a marathon starts at mile twenty.  A truer statement has never been uttered.  I struggled big time, negotiated with myself, and finally pushed through.  My wife met me around mile twenty-five and encouraged me through the finish.     As I crossed the finish, I was more relieved to make it than I was happy to finish.  I got my medal and tried to cool off.  Getting back to our car is a separate story, too long for this already too long post. It was over, six months of training, hundreds of miles, weekend hours that could have been spent with my kids, all spent to run these 26.2 miles.   

So girls, revisiting the question “why do it if it’s that hard?”.  The last post about this talked about everything from losing weight, to making friends, to bonding with my sister, but that’s not all.  There is something more base than that, at least for me.  For my friends from the top of the mountain, it was to qualify for the Boston Marathon, sure, but I presume it’s about something else, too.  For my bus mates who apparently run marathons in their sleep, it is more.  For my sister and I think most runners.  It’s about pushing yourself to do things you’re not sure you can do.  I didn’t run the time I wanted but I hadn’t planned on crapping my way down the mountain either.  I didn’t plan on having no sleep and I didn’t foresee 85-degree weather.  But though all of those things, I finished.  I didn’t run the time I wanted, but I finished.  When I woke up Monday morning, I was sore, my head ached, I was somewhat nauseous and needed to go to work and none of those things could erase what six months of training and a morning of trudging had instilled.  It wasn’t fast, and I’m not great at it but to quote my wife, “if marathon’s were easy, everyone would run them”.  So I guess, in the simplest way possible, “why do I run if it’s so hard?”, the answer is “because it’s so hard”.