Playing with Fire

We pretended to be firefighters donned in full regalia.  The thick, fire-proof jackets and spacious pants turned my classmates into indistinguishable brown rectangles.  The class lined up along the curb with air cylinders before us.  The technical term is a self-contained breathing apparatus, from which we would soon be gulping filtered air.

Instructors walked us through the process.  I checked the pressure gauge underneath the steel-gray bottle of pressurized oxygen and swung the harness over my back.  I donned a clear mask that covered my entire face and sucked air from tiny openings near my mouth.  Soon my breath created condensation.  With my gloved hands hovering before my plastic field of vision, I felt like a video game character who only displays his hands on the screen.  I plugged the regulator onto my mouthpiece and starting puffing Darth-Vader inhalations. 

For the next course, we were to extinguish a controlled fire using a heavy hose that required two people to handle.  The leader was to aim the nozzle, and the backup offered support by stabilizing the forceful water pressure.  Each person would perform both roles.  I originally chose Cody as my partner.  He is a sensible thinker, and his stoutness seemed a promising quality. 

Before we started, Cody chatted with Cheyenne, tall and very skinny, and Alexis, quite petite, and the girls worried their combined strength would prove an insufficient opponent to the mighty blast of the hose.  So they proposed a trade.  Cody paired with Cheyenne, and I partnered up with Alexis. 

The first pair wielded the hose and hunkered down in a defensive stance with knees bent and legs apart.  Before the team moved forward and approached the fire, the leader yelled, “Step!” and then shuffled ahead and dragged his back foot forward.  Flames leapt out from a metal grate that resembled a grill on the floor. 

As I stood in line and watched the others, I tried to break the ice with my partner.  She seemed nervous, so I attempted to comfort her. 

“Did you play any sports in high school?” I asked.  My voice squeezed out of the holes in my mask and somehow reached her ears.

“No.  Did you?” she asked, and I explained defensive drills during basketball practice.  We got down in a defensive stance and shuffled our feet as we yelled out “Slide! Slide! Slide!”  Yelling felt silly, but this taught us to communicate our movements. 

“Did you dance?” I asked her.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, picking up on my subconscious cues.  I suppose I was really asking her if she had any experience with this type of footwork.

“I have full confidence in you,” I said.  “I was just trying to ask relevant questions given the current situation.”

Fortunately, my plans to comfort her weren’t completely botched because she said she felt better knowing she had a good partner. 

We reattached our regulators and started sucking cylinder-air once more.  Alexis manned the nozzle, and I grabbed the hose near her armpit and I clutched the hose under my arm.  When the water gushed out, I leaned forward to counteract its force.  I pressed the hose hard against my side because I didn’t want to drop it.  I envisioned the hose flailing wildly as the firefighters dashed around like hunters simultaneously dodging a dangerous snake while trying to capture it. 

Alexis yelled out her movements, and somehow I could hear her over my audible gasps and the hissing stream.  She extinguished the fire, and then I took the reins.  I didn’t really process what was happening until much later when I was back in my civilian clothes.  I focused on my footwork and listened to my instructor and viewed the fire like it wasn’t real because this felt more like a videogame than real life.  I adjusted the stream from a solid burst to a spray resembling a violent shower and swept the base of the flames and the fire was gone. 

After exerting our insulated bodies, we took a break to moisten our parched lips and cool ourselves in the December air.  We operated a few fire distinguishers, carbon dioxide and dry chemical. 

Then we headed into a pitch black interior to simulate a search and rescue inside a darkened, smoky building.  Alexis and I were the last ones to start the course.  We waited on a bench in the foyer where I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.  I took my mask off, but I still wore thick boots and padded gloves.  With the reduction of sight and touch, I began to feel slightly frustrated with my sensory deprivation, and I had only been sitting down for less than ten minutes in the dark.

“Did you ever see the episode where Spongebob gets trapped in Rock Bottom and his flashlight goes out when he’s standing in line?” I asked. 

“I haven’t seen it in a while, but I know what you’re talking about,” Alexis said.

“This isn’t your average, everyday darkness,” I quoted.  “This is... advanced darkness.”

A door opened, and the cone of flashlight cut through the blackness.  The instructor told me to crawl on my hands and knees with my right hand against the wall.  Alexis grabbed onto my left boot, and I shuffled forward and groped the wall and the space in front of me.  I announced when I hit a corner, and we moved left.  The wall snaked around an opening, and we followed its course.  I hit my head off an inconveniently placed pipe and wondered what kind of contractor would design such a maze of a living room. 

Then my hand struck a strange mass that felt like a heavy bean bag.  I could make out a vague sphere connected to a larger indeterminate shape, but I could not so easily detect the limbs.

“I think I found the dummy,” I said.

“You think it’s a dummy?” a stranger’s voice erupted from the nothingness. 

Was someone hiding in here?  Who was this ghost and why was he making me doubt my conclusion?  The sensitivity of my fingertips was rendered inert with my gargantuan gloves.  For all I knew, what I was feeling could be a couch.  Or I was unknowingly caressing this stranger’s thigh.

The lurking stranger turned on his flashlight to reveal a large dummy.  I was relieved to discover my target rather than to find myself crawling up the leg of a mustachioed firefighter inside a dark playground.  Since we weren’t really becoming firefighters, we only had to locate the dummy rather than dragging him out.  This was only a simulation, but pretending to be a fireman was more enjoyable than any video game I ever played.