Recess

I was exhausted.  I hadn't been able to sleep before my shift yesterday–the product of alternating working nights and days too close together.  I was in a bad mood, so when I found out we were going to have to participate in a hot dog detail, I was wary.  

You see, I had forgotten how awesome hot dog details are.

I was working with one of my usual partners, "Gorilla EMT."  We brought Rescue 2 over to the elementary school, which was to be the beneficiary of hot dog detail, where we found Rescue 1, the Chief, and a gaggle of guys from Hazards, Ladder 1, and various engine companies.  

880 hot dogs.  We made 880 hot dogs.

The weather prevented the typical giant grill method of preparation, so hot dogs had to be boiled in a giant vat over a propane burner.  Our assembly line of dog-to-bun insertion provided fodder for a never-ending chain of inappropriate jokes.  

Between batches, I joined in a conversation with the chief and another FD member:

"We come and do this every year," the chief explained, "because of things like this, I can get residents to show up and vote, and approve the multi-million dollar bond we needed to get our new equipment."

"That's right, Chief," I said, "They don't remember when we put out fires in their houses..."

"well, they–"

"They don't remember when we come to their homes and pick up their sick loved ones."

"They defin–"

"But they remember the hot dogs!"  We laughed.

At some point, I lost track of Gorilla.  After looking around for a minute, I spotted him on the schoolyard, talking to a teacher who was supervising students at recess, and started walking towards him.  Before I reached him, I walked through a group of kids playing wall ball with a rubber hand ball.  

"What are you guys playing?" I ask no one in particular.

"Wall ball!" one tells me.  I ask if I can play and am granted permission, and instantly recognize the game from my childhood, "suicide."

I talk to the kids, who I find out are first and second graders.  We play.  The group grows.  We joke around.  I am a celebrity.  Gorilla comes over and joins in.  The students don't come up to his waist.  

At some point, the ball ricochets off the wall and hits a girl in the eye–pretty hard for her size.  She covers her eye with one hand.  I instantly recognize the look in her other eye.  She's hurt, but not badly, and whether or not she bursts into tears depends on what happens next.  A teacher hurries over to her.  "Alice, are you okay?!" the teacher asks her.  Before she can answer, I snatch up the ball from the ground, and jog over to her.  "Here, do you want to throw the ball?" I ask her, handing the ball over.  Her frown recedes, and she runs towards the wall to throw the ball.  Medicine: It sometimes comes in the form of a pink rubber ball, I think to myself.

The students are called to line up and go back inside.  After pretending that we are lining up with them for a minute and getting busted by a teacher, Gorilla EMT and I start back towards the apparatus and hot dog detail, only to see the next group of students coming out for recess.  Not ones to miss out on play time, we decide to head back to goof around with some more kids.  

I invite myself into a circle of boys and girls that seems to be doing some kind of choreographed dance.  By the time I realize what they're doing, Gorilla has wandered over.  "They seem to be doing a little dance to 'This is why I'm hot,'" I tell him.  They giggle.

He looks at me, bewildered look in his eyes, before saying "This is why I'm hot/I'm hot 'cause I'm fly/You ain't cause you not."  They laugh even more.  We talk to them, and establish that they're in third grade.

And this is when things went south.

My hyper-acute ninja-EMT senses detect movement behind me, so I spin around, catching a boy jumping up behind me, making the bunny ears symbol while I talk.  Ouch.  I got served.  The 10 other students clustered around me begin to laugh.  "Ooohhh, heck no," I say.  They laugh even more.  With my back to them now, one imitates the first offender and attempts to bunny ears me.  Well, that must have seemed like a good idea to the rest of them, because within 5 seconds, 10 third graders are jumping up and tapping the top of my head.  That's right; they'd abandoned the bunny ears all together and settled for slapping my head.  I'm  caught in the middle of a pack, and the pack is growing exponentially.  There is no refuge.

From tapping the top of my head, things spiral rapidly into a game of kill the carrier.  Without the ball.  It's kill the EMTs.  I am pulled in all directions.  Third-graders hang from my belt, my legs, and pull on my arms.  Feeling a tug at the left side of my waist, I quickly reach down and shut off my radio–just in time– "HELLO, 9-1-1, WE'RE ATTACKING HIM!" a boy screams into the speaker-mic.  I can see just how well that would have gone over at dispatch.  

In horror movies, small creatures often encircle secondary characters before swarming them and killing them.  Zombie children, evil-T-virus infected dogs, whatever they may be, I always have a problem suspending my disbelief–how could something so small take down a human?  I understand completely now.

With a third-grader latched onto each foot, another flies over the crowd that encircles me, connecting with an NFL-worthy tackle to my shoulders.  I lose balance and fall.  Having been at the bottom of it all, I have no idea how big the pig-pile that ensued was, but judging by how sore I am today, I imagine it was at least five feet high.  

Taking care not to crush anybody, I extricate myself and look for my partner, hoping to form an alliance.  Here I should mention that Gorilla EMT's pseudonym is not based on an unnatural affinity for banana's, but physical build.  Gorilla stands 6'5", a strong 235 lbs, easily, so I am surprised when I look around and see him at the bottom of a similarly large pile of third-graders.   

I run, and picture the hare-chase from the movie Snatch.  I am faster than the schoolchildren, but the zipper on my right boot burst open during the struggle.  Pursued by fifty screaming kids now, backed into a corner, I have no choice but to adopt a wide stance and hope for the best.  I feel like the guy in the zombie movie, armed with a revolver with three shots in it, facing a hoard of the un-dead, telling his friends "Go! I'll cover you!"  I know what is going to happen, and quickly find myself at the bottom of another pig-pile.  This time, I'm pushed over and almost land on top of one of the kids.  I have to maintain myself in a front leaning rest to avoid crushing him.  Luckily, I am saved by the bell, as one of the teachers yells: "Third-graders, time to line up!"  Slowly, the weight is lifted, and I am freed.  

Exhausted, t-shirts damp with sweat, Gorilla and I walk back to the truck.  The firemen have already stricken the hot dog setup and put everything into the utility truck.  We get into the rescue.  "You know, another group is probably about to come out for recess..." he says.  I stare into the crowd of lined up third-graders.  "I can't go back in there, man..." I tell him.  He nods in agreement.

As we leave, I hit the siren and air horn.  The students scream in delight and wave.

I didn't have any interesting calls during our 12-hour shift; I wasn't presented with medical challenges, nor did I perform any noteworthy procedures, but it was the best shift I have worked in a while.