FIREMAN TIM



Today is the day each year us engineers and office types don full bunker gear and put out small fires out on the fire field with extinguishers. Gives you confidence in the oil industry, doesn't it? They have to train people who can barely master the art of putting together cheap furniture from Ikea to put out fires. Why? Because there are a lot of fires at refineries! I hope you all sleep better tonight knowing that, if necessary, I can squelch a budding conflagration, assuming I can find an extinguisher, and I remember how it works, and I haven't peed my pants and run away in terror.



The most interesting part of the day is watching the "real" firemen at work. Yes, we have a full-time fire company in the refinery. Why? See above. These guys literally exude testosterone. You can see it rising off their craggy, leathery skin in waves. They bark at you with thick Philly accents and deep voices made hoarse by years of eating smoke. I always get the feeling, "Why am I out here?" If anything serious goes down, you know the last thing these guys want is some pipsqueak with coke-bottle glasses running around with a fire extinguisher. These are legitimate actual men here, not just a cowering undefined mass of protoplasm with male sex organs. I think they can handle it. But hey, at least I get to wear rubber boots.