Things You Save in a Fire(32)

“Not for your ears,” Case would say. “Scram.”

I don’t think they were actually trying to exclude me—not consciously, anyway. It was a type of chivalry, I think. They were trying to be polite, and possibly respectful. But their idea of what it meant to be female was off, and I couldn’t seem to recalibrate it.

I was, for example, a huge fan of cursing. The power of it, the rule-breaking shock of it. The year my mother left, I cursed incessantly—in front of my dad, in fact. With my dad. And he was too heartbroken and angry and disoriented to stop me. I’d fix him a drink or two, and fix myself one that was “virgin” (though it wasn’t), and we’d sit at the kitchen table eating Pop-Tarts and complaining about everything we could think of. Especially women.

“Women,” my dad would say scornfully.

“Preaching to the choir, buddy,” I’d say, only half joking. “Women are the worst.”

Later, when my dad married Carol, we both had to stop cursing. She didn’t like it. If we wanted to curse, she sent us to the garage.

So now, being the reason the guys at the house had to use limp substitutes like “frig” and “heck” and “dang” kind of made me feel like my stepmother.

“Guys,” I kept trying to tell them, “I like cursing. It’s one of my favorite hobbies.”

But the captain shook his head. “Not appropriate.”

They also kept making the assumption I was weak, which really struck me as odd. Hadn’t they all watched me do nine one-arm pull-ups on the first day? I’d bet a thousand dollars that Case couldn’t even do one pull-up using both arms and a leg. And yet they opened doors for me. They reached things on high shelves. They’d take heavy equipment from me and say, “I’ve got it.”

In itself, this wasn’t bad. I took it in the spirit it was meant. They were being kind. They were helping. It was more than I’d dared to hope for on my drive up from Texas, when I’d feared they were just going to glare at me all the time.

But there was a downside to it: the assumption that I couldn’t do those things myself. The guys weren’t holding doors for each other, or helping each other carry equipment. If they had to carry the hundred-pound roof saw for me, I was the last person they were going to hand it to when it was time to use it.

It’s easy to fixate on the size difference between men and women, but there are actually plenty of ways that being smaller can benefit you in a fire. You’re lighter. You’re lower to the ground and more nimble. You can squeeze through spots no big guy can navigate.

Remember that valor award I got in Austin for rescuing a school bus full of kids? That bus had slid off an icy road into a ravine and crumpled like an accordion. I’d been the only one small enough to wedge myself in. I was the one who pried all those kids out because I was the only one who could fit.

We all have our different upsides.

But that’s not how the guys saw it.

I didn’t want to reject the kindness when one of the guys tried to carry the hose for me—but I did want to reject the notion that I couldn’t do it myself. I finally settled on a phrase for every time one of the guys started to do something for me: “I’ve got it,” I started saying. “Keeps me strong.”

Half the time, they’d do it anyway.

It was kindly meant. And limiting. Both.

The other thing the guys kept insisting was that women had no sense of humor. Where did this idea come from? Over and over in those early weeks, I’d crack jokes that nobody laughed at. Jokes I knew would’ve been funny in Austin.

I guess it makes sense, in a way. Part of thinking something is funny is expecting it to be funny. So if you’ve already decided that women aren’t funny, then it’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Firefighters are, on average, very funny people. All the sorrow you absorb in that job makes you funnier. You have to balance out the pain somehow, and joking around is one of the best things about the job. There’s so much death in that world, but laughter is life.

You need it.

It left me thinking a lot about how much what you think you’re going to think matters. If you expect something to be funny, it will seem funnier. And if it seems funnier, it is funnier—by definition.

The only person who laughed at my jokes was the rookie. Of course, he laughed at everything. He was just that kind of guy. Another likable quality that I resented like hell.

So that was my life at the new station. No cursing. No comedy.

And then there was basketball.

In the afternoons, after the dishes were done, and the trucks had been washed, and all the chores were complete, the guys liked to play basketball out back. Shirts versus skins. And they wouldn’t let me play.

“You’ll get hurt,” the captain said.

“You’ll get destroyed,” Tiny said.

I suspected they all assumed I’d be bad at it. Even though I’d told them that my dad was a high school basketball coach and I’d spent my weekends shooting hoops with him since infancy. Even though I stood on the sidelines and explained—loudly—that I’d played varsity basketball in high school for four years and been the captain of the team.

“I am actually really good,” I kept saying.

But I was only five foot five. And a “lady.”

I finally decided to throw some money at the problem.