A Decade of Firefighting (sort of)

As promised, I am taking a look back over the past 10 years of work. Bringing back the crazy stories. If not crazy, then memorable. If not memorable, then at least made up just to entertain.

So what are the top 5 moments of the past decade from my sole perspective of working as a firefighter? I will write them one post at a time, in no specific order, starting with this one:

2004: We get paged out to a person complaining of a headache. This is a common call for us, and headaches can be serious. (signs of stroke, concussion, meningitis, etc). As we arrive, we see a 25 year old man with both hand on his head, holding it. As we approach him he tells us “my head is going to explode!” So picture a man who thinks his head is about to explode, who is holding his head to prevent that.... that is what we have so far. So my partner and I ask him to calm down and put his hands down so we can get him checked out. He adamantly refuses to remove his hands telling us he doesn’t want his brains to splatter all over us when his head explodes. Nice of him, right? So we ask,”Why do you think your head is going to explode?”

“Because there is an android in there.”

“An Android?”

“Yes,” he says, accompanied with a look that says, “DUH!” Like we are the dumb ones.

“How did the android get in your head?”

Again, a glare that makes us feel like we just asked the dumbest question in the world, but this time accompanied with a sigh, like he realizes we are absolute idiots when it comes to androids and heads. “The Mexican Mafia put it in there.”

So now, imagine this guy, 25 years old, who appears to one-hundred-percent believe what he is telling us. Also imagine us, having a sense of duty, and trying our absolute hardest not to laugh out loud (LOL) at this. Even though we have to remain professional, I still had to ask, and I know you would have asked too, “Why did the Mexican Mafia put an android in your head?”

“To stop me from doing my job!” Remember, the looks of impatience from our new troubled friend continue–and worsen–with each answer.

Still we press on, “What job is it that the Mexican Mafia wants to prevent you from doing?”

Sigh, “Filtering spirits.”

“Filtering spirits?” We exchange glances, because we thought we were confused when he mentioned the android, now this.

“Yes.” At this point we see the build up in his eyes, as if he just realized that he needs to tell us the whole story without our asking. During his long version, we manage a few questions of clarification, but keep it to a minimum. So he recaps–briefly–the above, and says, “My job is to filter spirits because I am the son of god. Not the actual son of god, but one of them, and I help him out by filtering the good spirits from the bad that he sends me. That way his job easier. But the Mexican Mafia got word of my job, and want it to stop. That’s why they put the android in my head. The android stops me from doing my job, but the spirits keep coming. There are almost too many of them. My head is going to explode any minute and I am going to cover you guys with lots of brains and blood.”

After his story we tell him that we need to take him to the hospital because our android-removal tool was broken earlier in the day when we removed another android, and the only working one left in the state was at the hospital. He accepts this story and happily gets transported.

Moral of the story. Don’t do drugs, especially not METH. The hospital gave us a follow up call and informed us the guy had so much meth in his system we could have scratched his arm and sniffed him to get high.

I have already written on here about a couple of others, but I link them here for easy indexing. Remember the one about almost doing CPR on the wrong lady? Thats here: http://chadsaysrebeccasays.blogspot.com/2009/07/new-title-chad-says-rebecca-listens-and.html

And finally the girlfriend passing gas at her boyfriends house: http://chadsaysrebeccasays.blogspot.com/2009/10/best-job-in-world.html

More in a few days.