Sleeping With Women Other Than My Wife

Well it came around a lot sooner than I had thought it would; I'm going back to Station 2. When all is said and done I will have spent only ten months at Station 6. I had commented earlier in a post that "I shall return" but I never suspected it would be this soon.

I didn't actively pursue a transfer back to Station 2 because I had been sent to the south side of the county, to a station that had experienced quite a bit of trouble, to make things right. I didn't have specifics on the goings-on, but the department was full of rumors. The fact that I was sent for a reason had always made me feel like I would be sent back when I was done. That's why I was so surprised when I was approached by the same man that had sent me, asking me if I wanted to go back to Station 2. I don't feel like I really accomplished anything but he says I've done an excellent job.

But then, maybe I did do what they wanted me to: the station is handling the county's business as it should. My hesitance in declaring my job done is based in the fact that I don't consider the station a "station." The men and women answer the calls and do a good job but they aren't a close-knit group like I have experienced before at other stations.

And that, I don't know how to accomplish. You see, Station 6 is not like most of the other stations in the county. Literally, the building is different. It was built in the last ten years and changes have come about; changes to accomodate the growing number of women in our department.

You see, the old stations have bedrooms with minimal privacy (if any.) You sleep with someone about five feet to your left and right. Everyone from the rookie to the officer sleeps in the same room. It used to be that the bedroom was full of men, but now you are just as likely to have one or two women in there with you.

A lot of non-firefighters, when they hear of or see this arrangement, ask how it's possible to sleep like that. Well, I'll tell you that I slept a hell of a lot better than I do at the new station. The new station has individual bedrooms for everyone. The officers get whole rooms to themselves with doors and all of the other crew each get a room with a curtain for a door off of a main hallway.

On paper this sounds like a good idea. The only problem is that privacy based in a departmental fear of anything that might be claimed to be harassment doesn't necessarily serve the needs of the people we serve.

For one thing, in an old station, if someone sleeps through a bell everyone else in the bedroom sees that you're not getting up and can kick your bed or maybe even roll you out of bed. But in the new stations, you have to go bedroom to bedroom waking people up. That takes time. Sometimes that's valuable time you're wasting.

The other problem with the new bedrooms is that they are very contradictory to socializing. Everyone disappears into their bedrooms to watch their own televisions or talk on the phone. No one hangs out in the dayroom (television room) and gets to know one another. We don't have to decide as a group what we are going to watch on the one television. There isn't any talking about problems with the kids, things you did this weekend, or discussion of that movie you saw that no one else should waste their money on. No, the only time you see anyone else is when there's work to be done.

That may sound trivial but in terms of getting a station to work well, it's paramount. And here's the thing about privacy; I don't have anything that anyone else hasn't seen. As a matter of fact, I probably have less. And it's not like anyone sleeps in the nude or sexy undies. When you're woken up at 2:53 in the morning from a dead sleep after a hard day of work, you aren't really looking around the room to sneak a peek at someone with less than their uniform on. On the contrary, I have a hard time finding my shoes much less some errant patch of skin. No, picture what the person you sleep next to looks like in the morning after a hard night and multiply that by ten. Nothing titillating about it at all.

And you know what? The new stations that are built to insure privacy do just that. As a mater of fact, there's so much privacy that have felt the need to expose themselves to others in private! And that was part of the trouble from last year that we heard so many ruors about! So, it's really ironic that the...well, you get it.

Whatever. The point is the new stations are designed to fail. So maybe I did as much as I could for Station 6. Maybe I wasn't ever going to get the station to relate on the level that I'm used to in people who spend 24 hours at a time together.

Regardless, I've made my choice and all I'm waiting for now is a piece of paper that show me going home. So, if you're in the Brookhaven area sometime after Halloween, come by and say "hi."

And I'm sorry about the horribly punny and deceptive title to this post.