Mar. 5th, 2005

meanfreepath: (Default)
It's strange sometimes how much of a disconnect one can feel from small children, and then how something can jerk back feelings and memories. How much am I, are we in general, one of les grandes personnes of The LIttle Prince?

Last Thursday night at training it was announced that two birthday parties were to be held today at Station 14, and that they wanted some extra hands for crowd control. So, not having much else to do this morning, I went down to the station to help run one of the parties. We were expecting around 25 five year olds and hence were a little worried about chaos. Setting up for the party was nothing unusual; they pulled Medic 102 and Ambulance 14-7 out of their bays to make room for folding tables, just as we would for dinner on a maintenance night. The usual tables, the same old brown metal folding chairs.

Apparently this was the birthday girl's third consecutive birthday party at the firehouse. So, we wanted to have something new to show the kids. Thus we pulled the electric PPV fan out of 14-2, the big powerful red fan we would use at a fire to do positive pressure ventilation to remove smoke and hot gases from a burning building.

Then the children arrived. We had some fire safety coloring books set out for them. Few things are as entertaining as children's art; it's not hard to get a chuckle out of blue firetrucks and firefighters suited in bright green. How often, though, do we see the hat, and not the elephant inside the boa constrictor? What do I miss in my own reading and judgements of other people?

After the coloring the kids gathered around the president of the SFPA, who was coordinating the whole party. One of the junior members and I demonstrated how firefighters put on turnout gear, the take-home message being not to be scared or hide from firefighters if they're coming for you in a fire. We then showed them the PPV fan and what it does. They got to see one of our antique pieces, a 1920's American LaFrance that actually had a hand-cranked siren. The children were not wild as I had feared they might be. Yet there was a certain energy, a certain liveliness, a let's-run-and-find-out curiosity, in their smiles and laughter and excitement.

We then had to split up the kids for their fire engine rides, to which they had been looking forward. Eight or so of them at a time got driven around the ville in 14-2 while the rest of them stayed in the station. Many of the children wanted to try on my turnout gear; as I'm one of the shorter people in the company, my gear is probably as close to child-sized as it would get. So I helped the kids step into my boots and try my coat on, the latter being about as big as some of them. They had a good time, and I can't say I had a bad morning either. I did have to chase off one little fellow who had somehow managed to climb up onto the base of Tower 14, but I guess he was just exploring. At least he wasn't trying to actually walk along the bedded aerial, at which point there'd have been a genuine safety concern.

And so the children had their pizza and cake and pinata, and soon enough everyone went home. Birthdays, I suppose, are special -- to have a nice big party with lots of your nursery school playmates around, with everyone excited and so eager to explore. Not a bad reminder when sometimes Swat seems like one enormous grindstone.

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meanfreepath

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