Ups and Downs Part 2

Timidity is no way to go through the only life you have. 

The Fire Department hosts hundreds of kindergartners to fourth graders each year for Fire Prevention Week.  Over the course of two days, with assistance from the DNR and Smokey (the bear), we entertain and educate kids about fire safety.  There are short videos and goodie bags and cookies and talks about not playing with matches.  And, because we have up to four classes at a time for each hour, we rotate the kids through fun and / or instructional fire and EMS stuff. 

It is sufficiently exhausting to drive home the point that teachers should be paid more.  Way more.

Sufficiently exhausted last year, my idea was to add something this year to our rotation of things for kids to do.  That idea was to build a tree in which we could place some toy kittens, and have the kids climb the tree and rescue the kittens.  Roped up and with helmets, obvs. 

The fledgling idea roamed around the vast tundra of neurons atop my neck for months, getting stuck in bog after bog, but principally where and how.  But then, (the always awesome) Poynette Ironworks dropped off a couple Connex boxes they converted into a live-fire training facility and I had a place where the idea could happen.  Living and learning from the let’s study this to death failures (see Davenport Promise and casino purchase), I just started building.  Better to show a finished product than try to explain it. 

A little engineering in the Shack and some REI acquisitions later, and we had a fifteen foot tall piece of removable landscaping along with equipment to get kids up and down the tree safely.

Here’s the best part.  The tree is cartoon-like enough to be almost irresistible to kids.  But it is also tall enough to be scary. 

As the kids get to the tree-climbing station, we only have a few minutes with each of them.  We need to get them in their rock-climbing harness, helmet and gloves and, while doing so, learn their name and whether they have ever done anything like what they are about to do.  We need to double-check their safety equipment and kinda guess at their physical capabilities.  And we need to give them some confidence that they can do what they are about to try.  Not so different from how city managers provide confidence to city councils, except the kids are more appreciative and daring. 

The stuffed kittens at the top of the cartoon tree, named “Bob” and “Billy” by the first two kids who rescued them, are just a ploy.  They are just a target for the child’s attention.  What is really going on as the kids climb is they are moving through fear to accomplish something.  It is an inoculation against timidity.  Which is (to be honest) a little tangential to fire prevention, so don’t tell anyone.

But what is not tangential to anything is how individuals, groups, or cities navigate the intersection of risk and opportunity.  How joyfully and skillfully that occurs determines whether the future is bent to the advantage of the person, group or city ... or whether the future consumes the person, group or city. 

PDFD’s new cartoon kitten-rescue tree is one of those intersections.  And though it is a bit silly, it actually works. 

Here’s proof.  A girl came down from the tree with her rescued kitten and a big smile and said, “That was scary !  But fun !"

Scary is fun.  You can’t get to progress without scary.

I hope she never forgets that.