Living The Dream
When I started down the path of my fire service career, I was so excited and filled with enthusiasm. I joined my local volunteer fire department when I was 16 years old. I had just passed the test for my driver’s license and thought what better way to see if this whole firefighting thing was for me.
I went down to the local firehouse and picked up an application to be a junior firefighter. Before I knew it they were bringing me to the gear locker and getting me a set of turnout gear. The coat was too big, the pants were too short, the gloves were old and smelled moldy, but boy, wasn’t I excited and ready to go.
My first night of being on the department goes by and no calls came in to respond to, but the second night as I returned home from school, the pager went off around 8:30pm for a reported structure fire. I raced down to the fire station, jumped on the truck and went to the reported fire.
We arrived to find there was a small fire under the house. I got to see the guys pulling lines and ripping lattice work off the trailer to extinguish the little fire.
Once everything was under control, I helped pick up the line they deployed and repacked it on the truck. Just like that, my first call and first fire was over. All I could think about was I wanted more; this was definitely something I fell in love with.
I will go back and give a brief history of myself. I grew up in a small town in Maine; yes it is “the way life should be”.
My father is a 33 year veteran of the fire service; he has worked for the City of Lewiston Fire Department since 1985. I would always visit him at work. I loved to play around on the fire truck and wear his gear during our visits. I always said when I grew up I would be a firefighter, but never really thought it would be true.
When I began my freshman year of high school, I set my hopes on going to a big college and studying architecture or civil engineering. My parents always encouraged this path.
I think it was because my father wanted a much better life for me than he believed he lived. All that changed one morning when I asked him while he was leaving for shift “do you like your job?” his reply to me was “if you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life”. He always looked forward to going to work.
He has always been the guy that would give 110% every shift. That is when it all hit me and everything became clear. I needed to find something that would be a passion and not just a job. From that day forward, I wanted to be a firefighter.
I had big aspirations to go work for the FDNY but I knew I would want to move back home and be a firefighter here one day. I signed up for the test for the City of Lewiston Fire Department when I was 19 years old.
The day came for the test, and boy, wasn’t I nervous. I completed the physical agility test and hoped I would have a shot at being hired.
There were 87 other people that tested alongside me for only one position that year. I was given an interview, and a few weeks later I received a call offering me the position.
What more could a 20 year old kid want out of life? I had received my dream job this young in my life. It felt like I had won the lottery. I know it is a huge fire service cliché, but receiving a job like this is really like winning the lottery.
I had accomplished everything I wanted. I would get to be a Lewiston firefighter alongside my father. A childhood dream had just become reality. The firefighter I looked up to the most growing up would now be one of my co- workers.
I can imagine that when we were kids and watching the fire trucks go through our cities, we all dreamed of riding on that truck one day. When you Google “Living the Dream” one of the first pages that comes up is Urban Dictionary.
I know it is not a very reliable source, but I looked down and read a few of the definitions they supplied. Two of them really made me think and made me realize it sums up the fire service perfectly.
The first definition made me think of the people that are in the fire service for nothing besides the pay check and benefits. “An answer to the rhetorical ‘how’s it going?’ usually given when someone at work asks how you are, and it is quite obvious that you have a crappy job.”
How many fire departments across the country have that 48 hour a week guy? They come in for their two shifts a week and that’s all they are going to give.
These members are never going to go above or beyond to make themselves or their department better. Yet, they will be the first ones to complain about everything that surrounds the fire service. All these people are interest in are the pay and benefits.
The next definition I found was as follows; “The state of believing that your life is at the pinnacle of everything you could possibly want, despite the presence of onlookers hating on you.”
How much closer could that get to the fire service than it already is? This is the definition that surrounds many of the great fire service mentors and figures that I look up to and aspire to be.
There are so many sayings out there that talk about the rouges or the rebels of the fire service. We are the group of people that “GIVE A SHIT!” We are the people that know this job isn’t about us or about the pay checks we receive. We know this job is about the people of our community that we swore to protect.
You will always have the haters that see you and are intimidated by your skill or your knowledge. There will always be the back stabbers and self promoters in the fire service that think if you bring people down, it will only make you look better.
At the end of the day, we need to remember who we are and why we are here. We are the people that are taking back the fire service, and we are here to stay.
We want to instil that passion and drive into the people that are like us, and are willing to continue and push the limits of what the fire service has to offer.
Every day we come to work, we need to remember this is the best job in the world and that we truly are “living the dream”.