Why do we find others so wrapped up in being offended?

When my best friend and I started in the fire service, the most well-known safety device for firefighters across the nation at that time were the man-saver bars being placed on the rear of fire engines and in the open jumpseat spaces.  That was pretty much it.  We had only one portable radio for each rig, our SCBA were the old steel bottles on the sheet metal frame with the waist strap regulator and the rabbit tool was just being invented.  Move forward with us to the present day and our discussions go on about how much has changed for both the good and the bad and for both the principle and the profit.

We’ve enjoyed what we experienced.  We appreciate what we had and didn’t have back then as well as what the current and future generations have now.  Yes, our fire service education was limited back then, compared to now, but we were not ignorant.  We trained, drilled, rode with busier departments, gleaned all we could from the magazines, and always sought to improve our skills.  Why? Because we liked being firefighters.

Your Identity Remains

Part of our identity, part of who we are, is firefighters.  Just firefighters, nothing more and nothing less.  Fortunately for us there was no internet and social media when we started and that is the rub for many of you.  We never wrangled over what was posted on a social media page by an anonymous figure of a person we didn’t know and would probably never meet.  Our fires weren’t being critiqued as we were returning to quarters and we didn’t know anything about any fire we were not on the scene of.  We didn’t get riled up over a shared article about the extinction of this trade or about guesstimating if someone inside a burning building was alive or not.  Through that and more we also were never compelled to bang on about our aggressive interior attacks or how many fires we had been to.  We didn’t have to assert our identity beyond simply being a firefighter.  It was a glorious time.

Is it not the same for those that came after us?  No, sadly it is not, but it can be.

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