...like that ride that would be alot of fun if you hadn't just ate the economy-sized funnel cake.
No, it has been fun. I am sitting at my desk at 47's on what I presume will be one of my last shifts here. I have cooked my promotional dinner, sorted my in-box, shifted all the documents appropriately on my station computer, and have started cleaning the pictures in my locker.
I came here in July of 2011 for no other reason than this station had its own restroom for the captain. No sharing, nothing. A genuine suite of captain's quarters. I've a nice set of windows that looks out onto the pad and occasionally firefighters working, a good-sized room, a nice bathroom, and my own hallway complete with constantly replenishing sets of daddy longleg spiders. It has an engine and an ambulance and a good crew of grownups that better than doing what they are told, rarely have to be told to do it. There is a group of a dozen kids that come through here in the mornings and afternoons to say hello and brighten the place up with neighborhood gossip and laughter, leaving chalk drawings on the pad.
We make good fires, some medical calls, and this is really a hidden gem. It has given me ample opportunity to strengthen my captain skills, not near enough to develop ladder skills but that is just where we are. My chief is awesome and I have been, like most times in my career, so very very lucky to have landed in the right place. The time has come to move on. The promotion to Senior Captain is upon us. Well, me.
I took the trash out after dinner and thought I would just wander around the yard and the driveway, to the back and all around. There is a fig tree in the back that shelters a blackberry bramble. We have a bumper crop of poison ivy on the back fence and a pecan tree that produces several million nuts a year. There are crawfish 'homes' in the front lawn. I never knew what a crawfish abode looked like; I kind of wish I still didn't. I wish I had encouraged planting a raised bed garden, gotten a picnic table, and done more art for the walls. Nothing was up before I got here; now we at least have pictures up and bulletin boards.
All that said, I do not feel like a Senior Captain. I feel like I have just barely settled into being a junior (I know. HFD is just asinine with the Junior/Senior nomenclature. I cannot explain it. At least now when I respond to people with my rank of Captain, it will be appropriate to the rest of the world.). As I walked around the property and the station I thought of when I first got in. Lots of people are around to help. Your training officers and your crew take time to make you the very best they can. People from all divisions have advice and stories to share. Everything is there for you to learn. When you move up to the next rank, or in my case as a paramedic, the help gets a little more selective. You are either an ambulance driver or an apparatus chauffeur. Medic or EMT. The help you get is generally tailored to those niches. If you spend long enough as an EO you may switch to another apparatus and learn that, unless you are a medic. Sometimes you will ride the seat but there is little to no training and we truly depend on luck and the hope that you have good common-sense to see you and your crew safely through the day. It is a clearly imperfect plan but there you have it.
After that you promote to captain. Again, there is a two-week class you go to (unless the department is in a budget crisis like we are periodically) then you get nothing. My experience was 3.5 days of the work I do 95% of the time and 6.5 days of putting out fires and cutting up cars, which you never cut up cars as a junior captain. There are fewer role models by then too, just by the nature of your pool of compatriots is getting smaller, I guess. As a Senior Captain you go to a one week class (again, budget depending) where you talk about building construction and rostering. Interesting but since I took the class 3 months ago I've no idea if it even relates and I certainly cannot put my hands on the three handouts I got easily. District Chief is an online class. None of that makes sense.
However, the strangest part is the seeming isolation. As you move up, again, your pool of contemporaries and trusted advisors grows smaller, it seems. I still believe in the advice of people from lower ranks and take it as needed. However, I cannot explain why the help dwindles away. Is it jealousy, a sense of "I had to do it the hard way so so should you", a persistant belief in that you only learn by doing, or fear of competition? I also do not know if it is because of gender. Maybe people are reluctant to help women because they fear we will take it the wrong way or they do not think a woman deserves the rank. I do not know. I do know that it does seem a bit more lonely at a time when some good advice would be welcome.
Anyways, I still find myself making plans for the future here at 47's. Drills, repairs, improvements...things like that. It is hard not to. I hope I leave here and this place is a little better, I did become a decent captain, and these people will think of me and go, "She was a good person and she did fine." That seems high enough praise indeed from people who followed you into harm's way on a regular basis.
Perhaps the next chapter will be about how Senior Captains really have a secret clubhouse with awesome snacks and daily hot yoga under a constantly beaming sun and joie de vivre at every bar stool. I am going to have to wait and see about that but I will definately report back.
