Veteran
I think people should date themselves more often.
That’s one of those phrases that instantly branches into two paths as soon as I say it out loud, which is why I so often get lost in thought, and mumble.
I sometimes date myself by mentioning that my favourite quarter is the 1973 Centennial quarter. Granted, that’s a bit obscure, but ‘life before cell phones’ comes up quite a bit, and ‘13 inch black and white television’, is a good one, too. Some guys like to wear unfortunately tight t-shirts with white-haired Vikings, motorcycles, smoke, and chains on them that say things like ‘Fear an old man in a profession where men usually die young.’, but that’s not really my style even though it’s potentially sound advice despite the appalling delivery.
I like old guys, they’ve got great stories, and even the scars to prove that they’re true, sometimes. The ones that are fun to listen to aren’t necessarily trying to teach lessons, they just want to tell stories because it’s fun, and it can mean so much to sit around with a bunch of guys and overreact. That’s what the oral tradition is all about, dating yourself to establish credibility, relating a tale in such a way that it pushes itself into the flow of the conversation to take it over for a bit, then makes room for another so that others can get some practice. Maybe that’s just tradition in general, but it’s very important to take part in it even though I just took all the fun out of it by making it sound boring.
A big part of being a fireman is listening to the veterans. A man with 25 years of experience as a paramedic and firefighter has a lot of stories, a lot of wisdom, and a lot of scars. A man like that likes to tell stories about the weekend he spent gardening with his wife, but he will tell you stories of the old days if he feels he needs to, and his words can save lives if you're wise enough to pay attention. Those kinds of guys don’t don’t like to hear people trivializing the job, or making jokes about the ugly shit you see when you do that kind of work. There’s a place for black humour and bravado, there has to be, there has to be a way to shake off a traumatic experience in order to prepare for the next one, and to create unity, but if the stories turn to disrespect, which they can easily do, a veteran will likely speak up and set things straight because that’s his job, and it’s everyone else’s job to shut the hell up and listen.
It’s hard to take a lesson from a story far enough to change your habits, but it’s a good skill to learn. A good Veteran’s stories are ugly, and also often hilarious, but never both at the same time, not really. They’re not about the guts and the glory, they’re just about surviving. As a first responder, you’ll often be surprised at what you’re supposed to be prepared for, and you often won’t be, especially early on. But that’s the job, and that’s why you train, and you listen to your Lieutenants and Captains, because they’ve trained more than you, and then you do what you’ve been able to make automatic, and become an engine that saves lives and property, if it's possible without becoming a casualty yourself. But it’s not always possible, and terrible things happen, and the engine shuts down after it's done, and all the parts go home, alone with what they’ve seen.
The hardest man I ever met used to choke up when he spoke to us about the importance, the absolute imperative, of respect for the job, and the maintenance of mental health in the face of repeated trauma. If you were attentive and receptive, he might loosen up and tell you about his weekend of gardening some day; if you took him lightly, as if her were just some dated curmudgeon, he’d just watch you, like he watched everybody and everything, for signs of wear that could become dangerous.
Ignoring a veteran is an act of brutality and profound stupidity. To do this, one casts aside all compassion and reason and the opportunity to learn from someone who has been tested to the extremes that you’d better hope you never have to go to, and survived to tell the tales. That’s why they don’t want to hear about how much you drank at the lake over the weekend with your friends; they’re thinking about all their friends who drank themselves to death or committed suicide because there was no support for them at home, and no one to call, and how they once were just like you, and how they wished they had listened to the grumpy old man in the corner who likes to garden.
