Heroes and Humility...

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I've done many of the jobs that people consider those of us who do them "heroes". Yet most of us who are considered such things either shrug off the title, or even make fun of it. I admit, it would have been easy to get caught up in it all. The people thanking me for my service, kids asking me for autographs or patches and such, being asked to stand at concerts and other events when we are just faces in the crowd. But there are reasons why our society considers people who do these jobs "heroes" and it isn't because our uniforms look so great! It's because of what is in our job descriptions... and those things are also why we don't accept the title as readily as people might expect. Yes, they called me a "paragod"! When life hung in the balance, night or day, I was among those whose lights and sirens pierced the dark and background noise. After 22 hours on duty, and just a few hours of interrupted sleep, I made split second decisions that carried a lifetime of benefits or consequences. But I also held the barf bag while the drunk filled it with his own cocktail of alcohol, bile and chicken wings. I held the stump of an amputee whose leg is so infested with gangrene that his flesh felt and looked like velveeta cheese (but smelled worse than any cheese in existence). During a summer, I spent my days fighting against the ravages of wildland fires. My team and I worked 18 hour days, depriving the flames of the heat and fuel it craved. On a good day our efforts saved the homes and lives of anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in the direction the flames chose to attack. On the other hand, I spend those 18 hours half bent over, knee half bent, scratching out a line in the foliage. My skin turned black with soot and ash, my feet sometimes blistered from the heat of the earth. meals weren't break times, when I enjoyed a half hour to relax with my co-workers, they were simply refueling, taking only the time necessary to stuff my face, wash it down, and get back on the line. That is if the fire is cooperating. If not, as Rooster Cogburn said to Mattie.. "Dinner time will come and go without notice. While most the time, we were all free to stop, walk a decent distance, hopefully far enough from the line, or behind something, so the call of nature wasn't too unnatural. However, the call of nature doesn't make deals with the fire. In other words, it's not uncommon for a wildland firefighter to return to base camp with a bigger load in our shorts than in our packs. After major disasters, teams of people come to the rescue. Response and recovery takes a lot of people, a lot of money, and a lot of willingness to run where others have evacuated. We get into places so dangerous the government has rendered the area off limits.. even to residents. We are they who bring hope to the hopeless, and make home livable. When people are allowed back home, we're there to help them return to their lives (already in progress). For some reason, no matter what kind of disaster our team was helping the local community recover from, our sleeping arrangements included basketball court floors. Basketball courts have permeated our society to the point that they are part of the floor plan of schools, churches, community centers, and surprisingly enough, basketball field houses. The fact they are nice and big, and apparently immune to disasters makes them ideal for housing the recovery teams... the fact they are made of hard wood makes them the ideal place NOT to try to sleep... yet I've spent more than one night with a basketball floor for a mattress and a rolled up coat as a pillow. You see, we don't feel like heroes (even though the public seems bent of forcing the title on us) because we often live lowlier than those that society has given up on. We see things and do things that would make a (place whatever example of lowly your mind conjures up here) puke. Put it this way, we'r the ones who clean up the puke of whatever type of person you filled in the blank with. That's not exactly the life of someone we would call "hero".