Because I Can… the random thoughts of Marc Scott

I am white.  Stark raving white.  I don’t mean Caucasian, though I am that as well.  I’m talking complexion.  I share the same colouring as that of the Abominable Snowman or a shiny new white porcelain toilet sitting on the display rack a Home Depot.  It’s pure.  In the right light, it’s blinding.  It the wrong light, basically, my body is about as pale as that of a corpse.

I’ve always been this way.  I think it might have something to do with my refusal to wear shorts or go to the beach and take my shirt off.  Long pants, short sleeves… farmers tan.  This is as good as it gets for me.  I am mostly OK with this.  I mean really, who the heck needs to see my hairy white chicken legs?  And nobody should be subjected to the abdomen that once enjoyed the glory of firmness and now mourns a fate that has left it with more rolls than a bakery.  It’s just not necessary to do that to people.

I went to the church camp I attended in my youth this weekend.  A night out of town.  No TV.  No internet.  No 3am dumpster fire calls.  Just rolling hills (that actually bear striking resemblance to my gut), big fields of green grass, wide open, clear, star filled skies, and air that is fresh and unused – like you’re the only thing that’s ever come into contact with it.  It’s a beautiful place to retreat to.

The deal is a trade.  I enjoy a little solitude in nature, and in return, I assist the camp with some maintenance.  Translation… I get a place to sleep for the night and they get somebody to mow those big fields of green grass.  Truth is, it’s an excuse for me to drive a tractor.  As a child I would beg grandpa to let me drive the tractor.  I spent countless hours on his farm pleading with him.  One time he let me do it.  I cut a turn to short and took out the corner overhang of a roof on one of the sheds.  It’s OK for me to drive a tractor at the camp now.  In the mostly wide open spaces, there is little for me to hit and damage.  All I have to do is keep the tractor out of the pond and I’m good.

Saturday afternoon I was at the camp alone.  50 acres of God’s handy-work all to myself.  I jumped on the old blue Ford, which actually looks similar to the one I drove on my grandpa’s farm, and away I went.  Cutting the grass.  Out there in the sunshine, in my 50 acres of seclusion I got this idea in my head.  I thought to myself, if you were ever going to try and tan your pasty white self, what better time and place to do it than right here, right now!

When you’re surrounded by trees and hills, it’s like you’re on an island, even though your not.  I was sheltered from the passing highway, and I knew the airplanes overhead were out of viewing distance.  I believed I could take my shirt off and do no harm.  When the sun bounces off my whiteness, somebody could catch those reflections and, broken by my shadow as I moved, they could mistake it for some kind of morse code signal or something.  However, since I was safe inside the confines of nature, I decided to do it.  I took my shirt off!

I got back from the camp Sunday afternoon.  I don’t think I was home for more than half an hour when the pager went off.  Grass fire.  I got up off the couch and made my way to the hall. I jumped into my boots and bunker pants and pulled them up, suspenders looped over my shoulders.  Before I got my bunker coat on though, a brother firefighter commented on my new complexion.  Standing next to the bright red pumper, you would have thought I was a part of it had it not been for the brown of my hair and the white of my teeth.

I raised my arms very slowly to put my coat on.  I winced a little from the pain that was beginning to setting in.  Then, as if I had done it to myself entirely on purpose, I smiled and said, “I’m just trying to blend in.”

It’s not normal what we do.  Firefighting I mean.  Well, it’s not normal to most.  It’s normal to me.  Maybe not at first, but after a while it became normal, or, at least as normal as such a thing can be.  You train.  You experience.  You do.  Eventually, you don’t really think about certain parts of the job.  It’s easier not to think about them.  Your training becomes as natural as tying your shoelaces.  You don’t need to think about it.  You just do it.

When people find out I’m a firefighter that’s usually what they want to talk about.  They expect that I will tell them brave and heroic tales of all the lives I’ve saved, all the dangers I’ve survived, all the glory I bask in daily.  I wish I could tell stories like that.  It sure would make what I do easier some days.  I don’t have very many tales like those though.  Mostly, I just have stories of tragedy, pain and loss.

When I was a kid I wanted to be a firefighter because all little boys want to be firefighters.  Having my dad on the fire department made it seem only more inevitable that I would join.  I remember going to the fire hall with dad.  Riding in the trucks whenever I could was always a highlight.  I used to put on old bunker gear that he had at the house and run around it.  When you’re a kid, that is all there is to it really.  It’s about cool gear and big red fire trucks with flashing lights and sirens.

They don’t really tell you too much about what firefighting can do to you when you first join.  I mean, they asked me questions like “How will you react to blood?”, “Would you be able to go into a burning building?”, “Can you handle what you might see at a car wreck?”  I answered the questions as honestly as I could.  “I don’t know.”  Truth was, I didn’t.  Dad had been a firefighter my whole life.  So that gave me insight into things I’d see and do too.  But even that can only prepare you to a certain extent.

Something else they don’t tell you is that, contrary to popular belief, you don’t very often save people.  In 10 years, I don’t know that I’ve ever saved anybody.  I had no idea that on the majority of the calls I’d be fighting a battle that was lost before I even made it through the door.  There is no worse a feeling, that I can imagine anyway, than walking into a situation where people are looking to you to help, and you know that you’re too late.  Do that enough, and no matter how tough you are, it will wear on you.

I’ve watched a police officer tell parents their son is dead while I was still doing CPR on him in the distance.  As I counted off chest compressions, knowing my efforts were in vain, I did not feel heroic.  I’ve held a charged attack line on a house burning out of control, well aware that I can’t stop the fire fast enough.  The family members watched their memories go up in a ball of fire.  While the flames licked out the window at my helmet, I did not feel brave.  I’ve held the jaws of life in my hands, using them to cut out a someone whom life had left.  I couldn’t save that one.

Firefighters don’t talk much about the dark side of the job.  Nobody would really want to hear it anyway.  I’m sure it’s a defense mechanism, keeping the stories amongst ourselves.  I’m not sure who we are trying to protect more.  Is it ourselves, from becoming vulnerable, out of fear that we’ll lose the tough layer that permits us to do the job day in and day out?  Or is it our family and friends we are trying to protect, from the pain and suffering that we have become all to familiar with?

On my journey as a firefighter, I have plotted points on a map.  I cannot tell you the house number.  I may not even be able to tell you the street name.  As I drive past certain places, I remember.  Sights, smells, sounds.  Each mark on the map inside my head comes with memories I’d prefer to forget, but can’t.  There is the barn where the electrocution took place.  There is the house where I almost got caught in my first flashover.  There is the corner where the woman was ejected from her vehicle and, almost as if controlled by the flick of a switch, her life stopped.  There is the field where the Air Ambulance landed the first time I ever loaded somebody into it.  There is the garage that was the first structure fire I ever entered, and after seeing what was inside when the fire was out, I am thankful I exited with my life!

I don’t regret what I do.  Not for a minute.  I’m 10 years in, and if I can stretch it out another 30, I’d be grateful for every moment.  And not all the stories are bad.  In fact, as I was writing this very blog I got called away to a fire.  A couple, enjoying a quiet evening on the banks of the river.  Lines in the water, hoping to catch some fish, they had started a small little campfire to cook some hot dogs on.  A passerby saw it, and called 911.  Those are the funny stories.  Those are the stories that bring, if only for a moment, the balance back inside my head between the good and bad.  When the dark memories creep into my dreams, the funny stories are the ones I recall to try and push them back.  Those are the stories I tell people about when they ask what it’s like to be a firefighter.

There are a lot of things that I’m not particularly good at.  For example, I’m not good at bending over and touching my toes.  In fact, I’m dreadful at it.  It’s a most embarrassing sight that would no doubt require complex medical procedures to undo should I ever attempt it.

I’m really not good at wearing women’s fashions.  I think it has something to do with hairy legs and bad balance in high heels.  OK, so, before the rumors start flying, I’ve actually never attempted to wear a woman’s dress or high heels, but I can only assume I would be bad it since I do, in fact, have hairy legs.  They’re also white as an untanned backside, and as big around as a the legs on a dwarf chicken.  I suspect that it’s because of these very reasons that God gave men jeans!

There’s one other thing that I really struggle with.  In fact, I struggle with it so much that it may very well be easier for me to wear a woman’s dress and bend over and touch my toes in high heels than it would be to deal with this particular issue.

When people find out what I do, they are usually impressed.  To me, it’s not a big deal.  It’s what I do.  It’s like a rock star playing a concert.  They do 300 of them a year.  So to them, it’s just another day in the office.  But to their fans, it’s the greatest thing since the invention of the twisty, environment saving light bulb.  I see my job as just another day at the office.  Other people tend to see it as more.

I work on the radio.  It’s a great deal.  I spend 4 hours reclined back in a big, comfy office chair and I play music.  Occasionally I come on and talk about something, with varying levels of intelligence, and a couple times an hour I give out the weather forecast which, will inevitably turn out to be wrong.  When I’m not on the radio I’m a Volunteer Firefighter and I do voice work.

Over the years I’ve done a lot of neat things.  I’ve interviewed artists, I’ve had my own radio and TV shows, I’ve run into burning buildings – well, more walked than run… they only run into them in the movies – and I’ve recorded voice-overs for everything from radio to TV to cartoons.  I really have been blessed.

It would be easy to be arrogant, I think.  I mean, I can appreciate that not everybody gets the opportunities that I’ve had.  I never really let it go to my head though.  I’m just another guy doing a job.  I’m just a servant, using the gifts that have been bestowed upon me by God, and trying to do good things with them.  I’m a pretty humble guy I suppose.

For this reason, the one thing that I’m bad at, perhaps more than any other thing, is taking a compliment.  It’s brutal.  I will do about anything to avoid a compliment.  I’ll change the subject, I’ll redirect, I’ll pretend like I’m getting a fire call and run away, or, worst of them all, I respond with some sarcastic remark that, while intended to be given and received with humor, is usually given with humor and received with insult and offense.

I had never really thought about any of this before.  Not too deeply anyway.  I always just assumed it was OK for me to pass those things off without much thought.  I never received them, not like I should have.  I couldn’t even say thank you for them.  I didn’t want them.  The irony is, I’m pretty great at giving them.  I love to give them in fact.  I love to build people up.  To make people feel good.  It’s not about ego stroking.  It’s just about giving credit where credit is due.

I read something yesterday.  Something I’ve read a thousand times.  Something I’ve actually got memorized because it’s been drilled into me since my childhood.  A man asks Jesus what good deed he must do to receive eternal life.

Jesus said, “Why do you question me about what’s good? God is the One who is good. If you want to enter the life of God, just do what he tells you.”

The man asked, “What in particular?”

Jesus said, “Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as you do yourself.”
Matthew 19:17-19 The Message

Even though I’ve read it a thousand times, it hit me different yesterday.  It hit me hard.  Kind of like I was standing in front of the train which is currently whistling by outside my apartment right now.  Love your neighbour as yourself.

My inability to take a compliment has a lot less to do with me trying to be humble and a lot more to do with me having some issues with self esteem.  I struggle with compliments, mostly, because I don’t think I’m worthy to receive them.  That is why I’m always dodging them, rejecting them, and refusing to accept them.  Lack of self esteem, in turn, keeps me humble, but not necessarily in a good way.

I don’t think that when I build up others, that I’m faking it.  At the same time though, I had to ask myself how can I truly love others if I can’t even love myself?

This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love.
John 11:12 The Message

I never meant to offend anyone when I rejected their compliment.  I’ve come to realize that by refusing it, or throwing it back at them, though, I wasn’t showing love to them.  I wasn’t allowing them to love me.  I most definitely wasn’t participating in any kind of love under the example set by Jesus.

I was thinking about a line from Ernest Saves Christmas. “They never get old. They always stay new. Those three little words, Please and Thank You.” That’s what I need to work on.  “Thank you.”  It’s not so hard.  My vocabulary definitely contains much larger, much more difficult words.  So I’m not entirely sure why I struggle so much with those two.

I really have no desire to touch my toes.  It seems unnecessary to me.  So I’m OK with being bad at that.  I also have no desire to flaunt my white-boy chicken legs off in a dress and a pair of stilettos.  Again, I’m OK with being bad at that.  Quite frankly, the world will be a better place so long as I remain bad at that one!  If I’m going to protect the world at large from my hairy chicken legs, then that means there is one thing remaining, and that will have to be the one I work on.  I’ve got to work on love and “thank you.”