Firemen to the Rescue!

What size was this jacket anyway???

Andy and Alex got to tour a fire station this past Tuesday!  It was courtesy of one of Andy's good friends, whose dad happens to be a real live firefighter.  I'm convinced that this has to be the parental career that a preschooler is most proud of.  If you were to ask little Eddie what his daddy does, he would likely scream, "My daddy is a FIREMAN!  HE'S AWESOME!"  Meanwhile, earlier today, I asked Andy what his daddy did for a living, and this was his exact reply.

"I don't know.  Oh wait.  He uses the computer.  He does that over and over again."

See, even Andy understands how mundane an office job can be.

So we toured the firehouse, which reminded me of that time about eight years ago when I had to be rescued by a fireman.

Chris and I were out on the little balcony of our old second floor townhouse.  I was always so careful about making sure the sliding glass door didn't latch behind us, and Chris thought it would be funny to "pretend" to slam the door shut while the glass door latch was in the lock position.  Ha ha, hilarious.  So, of course, Chris fake slammed the door shut behind us, and it locked.  We were stuck out on our balcony like a couple of morons while ABC's "Lost" played on in the background on our old twenty-four inch tube TV.  (Sidenote: We've come a long way in the world TV-wise.)  I believe I punched Chris in the shoulder and called him a nasty name while he tried to yank open the sliding door, which was very locked and completely stuck.

"I guess I'll just jump down," Chris said dubiously after a while, looking down at the fifteen foot drop.  Very carefully, he shimmied himself down the supporting beam of the balcony and then looked up at me as he stood in the dirt in only his socked feet.  "Um, do you want to come down, too?"

No, of course I didn't want to come down.  This was Chris' mess and he could get us out of it himself.  "Good luck," I called after him, knowing that the one first floor entrance to our townhouse was locked.  I sat down on the balcony floor and sipped my wine while I watched Chris head around the corner to our first neighbor.  He explained the predicament to him and apparently had the door slammed shut in his face.  This alone made the situation a story worth retelling.

At the second neighbor's house, Chris was able to use the guy's cell phone.  He called 911 and had the following conversation:

"911, what's your emergency?"
"Um, we're locked out of our condo and can't get back in."
"Is this an emergency? Are there any small children or animals locked inside?"
"Well, my wife's stuck on the balcony, and she's pretty pissed off."
"Okay. I'll connect you to the fire department."

Flash forward ten minutes later to when a huge honking fire engine rolled into our little parking lot.  I hid my face out of embarrassment while Chris wandered over (still only in socks) to talk to the firefighters.  I glanced into our townhouse to see what was happening on "Lost," and after a second, I saw a fireman's gloved, grimy hand pushing up one of our windows.  A moment later, a fully outfitted firefighter (he was wearing the helmet and everything) launched himself into my living room.  He glanced over at "Lost," (man, that was THE show back then), and then clomped over to the balcony door in his big heavy boots and unlocked it for me.

"Um, thank you," I replied, and then my hero was gone in a flash.  The fireman went down the stairs and Chris came up.  His face was a little red, and in one hand, he held the mangled screen to our living room window, the one the fireman had had to tear off in order to gain entrance into our home.

"Well, that was fun!"  Chris exclaimed jovially.  "Is my wine still out on the balcony?"

After that, we were BOTH always very careful with the lock on the balcony door.  And while I waited to receive some kind of bill from the fire department for wasting valuable man hours with being rescued from a balcony due to a nitwit husband, that bill somehow never arrived.  I did later read that while the firemen were busy rescuing our dumb asses, two houses and a post office burned down, and I have to say, to this day, we still feel mildly guilty.