Here goes nothing.

Well it's a true statement, I never did want to be a fireman, but that didn't stop me form becoming one and doing that God forsaken job for over 30 years. God forsaken you might ask? Well maybe an over statement but on some days it was hard to find where God was in the mix. Like on that day in September we all remember.

Anyway I guess I should explain how I got a job I didn't want, or more specifically never really had in mind, and then worked at it for more than 30 years. As a boy I can't remember every having that fantasy job on my list. I do remember cowboy, super hero, various branches of the military, and pro football player, but not the firefighting gig. I even toyed with the idea of being a dancer at one point, have no idea what that one was about, but I think it had something to do with Disney movies.

So after a great start in the work force in all those school kid kind of restaurant kinda jobs, I landed in a German bakery for about 6 months. Loved the job hated the hours. What full throttle eighteen year old boy wants to bail on post graduation parties on Friday nights and go to work at a bakery? So I gave up my dream of making perfect wedding cake roses out of frosting and networked my way in to a local car dealership. (The father of a girl I liked ran the used car lot so that's how I got in).

After a meteoric rise within all the job responsibilities of the lot boy job description I moved into a couple of other areas of 18 year old expertise. I should mention at this point I used to have, for a long time the inability to control my vocalizations, I would say any thought that came to mind without the slightest bit of filtration. Or as my father was fond of saying I let my mouth overload my ass most of the time, and that is how I came to be a fireman.

I shot my mouth off to the boss one day and needed a job. I called my father and asked if he knew of any job openings around town and after some fatherly advice on how keeping my pie hole shut would have enabled me keep my previous job, I should call a man he knew that was a sculptor and artist and more importantly to me the chief of a local fire department. Dad thought he might be looking for firefighters.

So I called, set an appointment, and in a few days I was in fact a completely naive, untrained firefighter at eighteen year old. What the hell was I thinking? And the proper answer to that question we should all know, is that eighteen year old boys are incapable of thought, we operate of the action life style theory.