s, first with anti-bacterial soap, later by several shampooings. Lisa bent to kiss me this morning and was repelled by the odor. She said it reminded her of getting carsick, as a child, in her family's red Mustang. My new Airlift Northwest baseball cap may very well retain a permanent olfactory reminder of this morning. You learn some lessons the hard way.Almost three years on the job, I claim the dubious distinction of being the lowest-ranking person on "B" shift. I have about a dozen guys below me, but none of our probies have been assigned to my shift. As befits such a dubiously distinguished fellow, completely lacking in any measure of seniority, I am the person who lays down, in the dirt, for the drill. I am the one with the dead-last vacation pick. And when there's a hole in the schedule, I pack up my box of bedding, my bunker gear, and I move it all somewhere new. I find myself scheduled to work on an aid car fairly regularly, but owing to my transient position, I seldom do. I can't claim more than a couple of continuous months on any one rig, at any one station. I ache for a permanent assignment; Constantly moving is a subtle extension of probation.
I have become versatile - I work on engines, aid cars, and, sometimes, the ladder truck. I have a broad knowledge of the City, whereas Seth, hired same day as me, has worked his entire, short tenure in the north end. I have worked with every captain, and more than 90 per cent of the suppression staff, in the same station, if not the same company (vehicle crew). This nomadism is a great way to meet people, but sometimes makes it difficult to find your groove, to cultivate that mix of partnership and smoothness that a seasoned crew possesses.
Smooth is good. A probational rite of passage, measured annually, is donning your airpack for time. The goal is to be packed-up, masked-up, in less than a minute. It's a standard in the fire service. It's a fairly simple process, anyone can do it, but it takes practised finesse to beat the thirty second mark. As a new recruit, your continued employment hangs on your being facile with your equipment, and you're tested regularly on this task. The stress of being timed, coupled with the importance of your perfomance, make it harder than really it is. A minor bungle can cost you valuable seconds that you might not have. The best and wisest advice I received was: "Slow is smooth; Smooth is fast." This scales to everything we do, especially when learning a new skill.
There's a dozen ways to tackle many of the calls to which we respond, but the smooth crew will effortlessly handle the situation. It takes a few shifts, and many calls, to polish the nuances of working together as a team, negotiating roles and responsibilities. You grow into each other, strengths complimenting weaknesses, flexibility accommodating rigidity. It takes time, time I seldom spend in a given assignment.
With six stations and a dozen assorted rigs, the details of my job change weekly. Even though the Department has standardized our engines, there are minor differences in equipment and storage, and every fire station is unique. Knowing which compartment contains the chain saw is smooth. Knowing where the toilet paper or batteries are stored is smooth. Knowing how to get to an address, through traffic and around obstacles, is smooth.
We get exhaustive training on the particulars of the BIG parts of our job: firefighting, CPR and EMT skills, deploying ladders and power equipment. Little things, details, are frequently taught by your peers, and often left as an exercise for the new recruit. When you move around a lot, it's easy to feel a little lost, to feel like the new guy. It can seem like navigating a pitch-black warehouse - you cautiously move in a straight line until you trip over something, walk into a wall, or bump your head.
I worked at station 42 yesterday, a comparatively rare duty on the aid car. I've spent enough time there for it to feel like home, but driving the aid car is a rusty skill. I turned south on the way to an address in the north, headed to the wrong hospital, made the bonehead mistakes everyone makes. My partner was a little rigid in his expectation of smooth. Every time I work with this guy, I come away from my shift feeling like a clueless newbie. It used to bother me greatly, until I realized it wasn't personal - he's critical of every partner. But I'd rather laugh over a minor misstep than defend it.
As driver, my responsibilities include maintaining the aid car, checking the fluids, aid kits, oxygen tanks, sundry supplies. This morning, we rolled on a call for difficulty breathing, just before 0700, which the medics transported to the hospital, on frosty streets. When we returned to the station, I backed the rig up to the fuel pump to top off the tank for the next shift. The hose wouldn't quite reach and I pulled about twelve feet of hose from the reel. After filling up, intending to save the next guy some effort, I made to leave the hose on the ground, rather than retracting it into the drum. To get the extra hose out of the way, I whipped the nozzle in my hand, neatly laying the hose along the station wall. In my mind, a slick and sensible technique - smooth.
The thimble-full of diesel remaining in the nozzle launched into the cold air, flying in a precise arc, splattering on my hair. Suuuunn of uuuuh... I hastily scrubbed my head in the bathroom sink, later laughing about my goof, over coffee, in the kitchen. And so now my hair stinks, and I continue to learn some lessons the hard way.
"Slow is smooth; Smooth is fast."
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