I have been asked if Firefighters are good in bed and since I’ve only slept with one, my ex-wife, I have a very limited data base on the subject. I won’t discuss my ex-wife in this post as that is far too private for a blog. I will offer some stories about firefighters in bed that I do know all too well.

Most of the fire houses I worked in over my career featured dormitory style bedrooms with a dozen or so beds set up around the room. Most of the time the bed you used was also used by other firefighters on your days off.

Some bunk mates were good others not so much. See if you share a bed it is your obligation when going off duty to tear your bed down and leave it bare for the next guy. Just simple courtesy to keep harmony in the house. Now an occasional mishap was no big deal, maybe they were on an alarm and just forgot about it before leaving, that could be forgiven.

But the chronic offenders had to be dealt with. First with a few friendly reminders.

“Hey bro you forgot your bed again.”

“Dude take care of your bed or I will.”

“Look asshole strip your bed okay?”

Failure on the offender’s part to recognize that things were getting testy wasn’t good. Now some firefighters are just dim bulbs and can’t help themselves, they get distracted by morning coffee chit-chat or shift change banter or simply wander off.

If your bunk mate is just helpless and incapable of remembering, you do have options. If you like the simpleton you just strip the bed for them and put their bedding away. If you dislike the asshat then you wad their stuff up and throw it on the ground.

But if you are dealing with the intentional misfit things escalate. Some guys just seem to get a kick out of jacking with others and I have worn both hats.

The Jerk, many times is a bored firefighter with time to kill. Most of the time you are working at a slow station with a lite alarm load and thing just get boring and this is a great way to conjure up some action. For me I only took this route when my brother firefighter was one of the anal types.

These guys brought beautiful twin sheet sets from home or had actually gone to Beds Baths and Beyond to purchase a matching set with a comforter. They even had seasonal bedding, flannel for the winter and fall, Egyptian cotton with an 800 thread count for spring and summer.

I don’t know but that just seemed a bit too much for the fire house. Therefore I struggled with their choices, don’t get me wrong here, if the guy stripped his bed like he was supposed to I didn’t care if his linens were made out of bacon, just take care of your end of the bargain.

Repeated and unremorseful offences had to be addressed, my favorite was to soak the offending sheets in water and then stuff them into the freezer. That generally worked. But many times it lead to an escalation in hostilities inside the bedroom walls. Retaliation was required for an insult of this magnitude.

The good news for me was that most of the time this type of firefighter lacked the ability to come up with a better form of revenge, they lacked imagination and many times lacked team support from their crew. No one else was willing to proffer suggestions on how to retaliate or offered to help. This left the poor bastard to devise his own type of trickery.

Prior to the internet and the ability to search Youtube or Google for practical joke advice was of course unavailable. So these men created their own unimaginative yet diabolical plans. Mr. Fancy sheets plan went completely unnoticed by myself, which caused him even more frustration as he spent day after day waiting for me to comment or retaliate, I did neither.

Finally one morning over coffee he couldn’t contain himself any longer.

“So TimO, did you notice anything different about your bed?” He asked.

“Different about my bed? No can’t say I’ve noticed anything different about the bed. Why is there something different about the bed?” I asked.

“So the bed doesn’t smell differently to you?” He said.

“Not that I have noticed. What is it you’re after here Bucky?” I asked.

Now everybody at the table had become intrigued and stopped what they were doing to listen in.

“You’re serious you really haven’t noticed that your bedding smells like my ass and feet?” He said, becoming a bit agitated.

“It does?” I said.

“Yeah for like two weeks now.” He said.

“Well Bucky, I can’t say I know what your ass and feet smell like to be honest, I thought that would be your wife’s job not mine.” I said.

“You better take that back.” He said.

“Take what back?” I asked.

“Insulting my wife like that, you need to apologize.” He was getting visibly disturbed now.

“I didn’t insult your wife Bucky. She shares your bed at the same time as you, where as you and I share a bed independently of each other. So if our bed at the fire house smells like your ass and feet how would know?” I said.

“Because I put some dirty socks and underwear in with your sheets in your locker. That’s how.” He said.

“And you expect me to pick up on that odor in that bedroom? Bucky a well trained bloodhound couldn’t make sense out of the smells in there.” I said.

“Well you should’ve.” He said.

“Didn’t.” I said.

He stomped away blushing and mumbling. But that was the end of aggressions not in the least.