Sparky is Fired
It seems this was fire safety week so I took the ladies to the open house at the fire station. When I had informed Phoebe we were heading there she immediately thought of Sparky the fire station dog and I refrained from promising his presence until I saw the flyer on the wall at Tedeschi which specifically mentioned him. The ladies had a good time but it was a little stressful for one parent due to the large number of kids, poor lighting, and the extreme height of the seats in the trucks. I brought them into the fire station to give myself a break and seek out Sparky the dog and during the few seconds my attention was off them, Ellie discovered the immense amount of popcorn on the floor and started helping herself. I am not a neat freak but the floor of the fire station during an open house does not exactly provide for any kind of savory seasoning. I tracked down popcorn which was being served in cups which triggered a response in the girls to “drink” the popcorn. I considered stopping them but refrained because I have been known to do this myself and they are Americans after all and should learn these kind of techniques for rapid ingestion early in life. We headed out back for some fire extinguisher demonstrations but our progress was halted when Phoebe caught sight of the desserts displayed on a very low lying table which gave the girls full access to an immense pile of red, green, and white oreos and an array of m&m cookies. I let them pick one cookie which might have been the biggest decision either of them have ever made. They went for bulk and I made a note in my head to get them out of there before any sugar crashing (I failed to follow through). We went out back and watched the “jaws of life” demo which consisted of firemen cutting off random parts of a sad old red toyota which was without question in better shape than any of the cars I had in graduate school even after that had been at it with the hydraulic shears for a half hour or so. I then took the ladies to the kids fire safety house which is a portable construction trailer that has three rooms, the middle room being filled with actual smoke. They are supposed to enter that middle room and make it to the back room and out a window. The thought of this terrified me and I was somewhat relieved when Ellie put a definitive no on her participation. Compared to the jaws of life, cookie tables, and actual fire trucks, the safety house was not seeing a lot of foot traffic even though it is probably the most important component of the open house. Sparky, by the way, was a no-show.
