Probie IV
“I would not have guessed sixty.” Instructor Boone is being kind, which is to say (just beneath his no excuses teaching style) he’s being himself. Play the tape back twenty seconds and one of my classmates was gasping for air, knackered by how physically demanding the last evolution was. Instructor Boone asked how old he was. “Eighteen”, came the reply. Instructor Boone laughed heartily, “I can do it and I’m twice your age … I’m an old man”. Then I started laughing and the Q&A about my age commenced.
Firefighting is physically challenging. Just putting the gear on adds forty pounds, and that’s without carrying a tool. The tools range from this thing sure is sturdy to how the hell is one person supposed to lift and move this. The physical demands have already washed a few classmates out, and the mental challenges of compartmentalizing fear (heights / claustrophobia / fire / death / life and death responsibility) as you complete a task have taken others. I counted thirty-two when we started and we’re down to twenty, with three weeks to go.
Ladders and hose movement the last few classes. Sounds easy enough. Raise a ladder. Move a hose. The ladder evolutions include thirty-five foot behemoths, in full gear, and carrying some of those ridiculously heavy tools. There’s this “leg lock” thing - that I’m sure the Geneva Conventions do not allow - which everyone has to do. You got long legs that don’t really bend that way, and some toes that don’t bend at all? Too bad. It’s a state requirement. If any single thing was gonna trip me up, it was that, but I got through it.
Then, you carry a ladder, while climbing a ladder. Then you carry a tool while carrying a ladder while climbing a ladder. If I had a boat, I’d go out on the ocean. And if I had a pony, I’d ride him on my boat, I sang to myself, whilst enjoying the view and multiple hematomas on my throwing shoulder. A decade spent in service of alpinism, with thousand-foot drop-offs appreciated more than feared made the ladders joyful, at least for me. And the muscle memory of not looking up when someone shouted “look out!” was … um, helpful. Helmets are much better at deflecting falling stuff than faces.
Ladders are (for me) fun. They remind me of adventure. Hose movement, though, sucks. Hoses full of water are incredibly heavy, and wickedly difficult to move. They don’t like to bend. They get caught on every corner, door and piece of furniture in every room. Mask up. Turn out the lights. Pump up the smoke and heat. Make it so loud you can’t hear your partner shouting three feet away. Enter a place you’ve never been and have only the sketchiest conception of where the next door and hallway might be. Get to the fire and put it out. While crawling, slipping and falling constantly on a wet, slick concrete floor. Trying to manage your breathing to make your air last long enough to get the job done. While your instructors are purposefully (and rightfully) giving you the wrong instructions, mimicking the errors embedded in emergency communications. While your partner’s low air alarm starts going off, followed by yours.
It is savagely difficult, disorientingly cacophonous, intensely physical work. But if you’ve done your cardio, core and compartmentalizing faithfully, for long enough, (at least in the practice burn buildings) it’s also kinda fun.
Decades spent in service of coaching baseball and / or leadership has been helpful. There’s me and one guy who is thirty-eight, but the average age of the rest of the class is fake i.d.. Something starts to go wrong and they start to freak out a bit. Sixty laps around the sun has its disadvantages, but lack of experience with things going wrong is not one of them. I used to tell the kids in baseball that something will go wrong, and you can’t focus on that; you have to focus on the task at hand. The task at hand is to make it through each evolution, and the class, and help my classmates make it through as well. Finding the fun in the difficulty is part of it, even at sixty.
Hold on ... that's wrong. Especially at sixty.
