MonkeyPants

Random Crush Monday.

Today’s random crush is firemen. No, not a fireman. All of ‘em. I like the young, idealistic ones with freckles and sticky-outy ears. Of course, I like the calendar-worthy handsome ones. I like the hard-bitten older ones with silver hair. I like the captains who struggle between firehall gourmet food and their threatening-to-expand guts. I even have a crush on the female ones, so I guess I have a crush on fire fighters, but I’m going to keep on saying ‘firemen’. I like the married ones, the single ones, the engaged ones, the divorced ones. I like them all.

The thing about a fireman is that he’s not there to judge if what you’re doing is right or wrong. He’s there to make sure that you are safe. That your heart keeps beating. Incidentally, did you know firemen around here have just as much CPR training as paramedics? Fact. They also have a buttload of other first aid training. Firemen can keep you alive. It’s their priority.

Firemen believe in life. Now, I know we all know this, but let’s just examine this next sentence: A fireman will run into a burning building to save total strangers! How true is that of most people on the planet? Firemen are not going to examine the other person’s morality or legality or whatever. They are going to save them first and ask questions later. And they don’t arrest you.

Firemen are also very nice to the public. I know this because of my father’s habit of taking us to firehalls when we were children. I must have been in firehalls in about a dozen towns and cities in BC and Alberta. All the firemen, everywhere, were like, “Hi! Come on up on the truck! Here’s the pole we slide down. Try on our hats!”

I know it’s not just me who loves firemen. I can remember sitting in the staffroom at the school I taught at in Burnaby, and one of the other teachers slid in the door. “There are firemen in the caf! Teaching CPR! I may faint!” and she dashed off. Another colleague, a fiftysomething, hard-nosed, unsentimental type perked up. “I like firemen. Maybe I should go get a muffin.”

I love firemen. That’s why I wave at fire trucks. My aunt used to tell me that the firemen got a quarter every time someone waved at them. Now I just wave to see them wave back.