another life blog

Have you ever wondered what a fire station is like? Though there’s probably a lot of truth from movies like Ladder 49, the reality must be somewhat different! Well, I still don’t know what a fire station is like, except I know now to NEVER EVER ring their door bell! Unless of course, it’s a real emergency. So, why did I go ring their door bell?

Back in early January, I went to get my physical done at Tampa ~ unfortunately, I wasn’t thinking and drank a lot of coffee that bright… er, dark early morning. This made my heart rate go all whacky. A month later, the surgeon general of the Air Force is telling me to prove my heart isn’t suffering from tachycardia, I must have my pulse rate checked once every day for the next five days. This normally shouldn’t be a problem, except walk-in clinics are usually closed on weekends, and they called on on Thursday of last week to tell me of this. The application is like overdue already, so I had to get it done on the double!

UCF health center didn’t have a problem with it. I met with a nurse named Suzanne, and she got me a little card where they can write my pulse on it. But they aren’t open on Saturday to none emergencies, and Sunday is totally closed! The Suzanne (and later, Michelle) said, “go to a fire station!” So, yesterday at around 3, I went to check out my local fire station #83 on Lake Underhill (only 1~2 miles away). My first impression of the place was… “wow… no one is around… what’s going on?!” The station has three huge garage doors, each ready with a fire engine to head out. The fire engine’s doors are all opened and ready for people to just leap right in! Very much like the movie ~ however, there’s no one around the trucks at all! No one in the front office, … just… empty, with one of the garage door wide open.

I suppose there’s a resting quarter in the back, where they’re all relaxing and etc… but I was a bit afraid to go in and interrupt them. So I stood outside, and sorta waited for a while. Deciding that what I need, isn’t an emergency and they might decide to chain me to their fire engine for disturbing their important resting period - I went and drove around for an hour, looking for a clinic. None were open. As I was driving past the fire station again, about to lose hope, lo and behold, a fire engine was just returning from duty! I immediately turned about, and caught one of the fire fighter as he was working.

Ah, I should’ve known that all fire fighters are great and wonderful people. He welcomed me with a bright hello, and asked what he could do for me. I explained a bit while we headed for the front office, and then he just took my wrist, took my pulse, and signed me off! I didn’t get his name though… definitely should’ve.

So anyway, this morning, I went with Po, Dar, and Mei over to Crazy Buffet to eat. After, I took Mei to Toys R Us. Mei was really pleased with all the toys, and after a lot of deliberation, chose a little “Push-Me-Buggy.” Well, it started with a monkey stuffed animal with long arm that’d hang around the neck. I took her around, and with each new toy she touches, I’d ask, “monkey, or… this?” For the longest time, she said, “no, I want monkey!” Then, she saw a train set. It’s very similiar to the one she has back home, but something about it made her go, “Train!!” When I asked the question, “I want train, no monkey.” So, I had to lug a big box of train set around. As we went to more places, we kept comparing items. “Stuffed piggie or train? Stuffed doggie or train? Huge stuffed ponie or train? Etch n’ sketch or train?” Eventually, Play-doh caught her eyes, but this time, she had to “think” before saying, “play-doh, no train.” Thus, a much lighter load, and my wallet was smiling upon me then. We looked around further still - and I almost convinced her a “lightning/storm baton/sword” would be really cool, but Play-Doh won, time after time. It’s a really cool set, with little thing to make Play-Doh figures, and 10 different colors. We continued down the isles, playing with all different toys, and deciding. The last thing we looked at, were children’s bike and tricycles. There, we spent the most time as she abandoned the Play-Doh immediately, opting for something bigger and more fun.

I really wanted to get her a transforming set ~ that would go from a push-along tricycle, to stand along tricycle, to a bike. But, because the first thing we saw was the little pink buggie and I pushed her around half the place with her in it - she ultimately chose the buggie. Oh well, I did tell her in the car, it’d be whatever she wanted, long as the price tag isn’t 3 digits =) Ah, the only bad thing was getting her off the dang buggie to check out. The big toys in Toys ‘R’ Us, have tickets on em. You bring tickets up front, and they bring you a box. This concept was foreign to Mei, so I ended up pushing her to the front of checkout, in the little buggie, and said, “okie, time to check out, get outta buggie.” Amazingly, she just got out, and was okay with it. I wasn’t sure if she knew I was still gonna buy it, or if it’s okay to leave it behind in the Toyland since we’re going home. Ah well, whatever =) It all worked out in the end.

Ah - I sidetracked there for a while. Heh. Anyway, on the way back home, i still needed to get my pulse checked. So with Mei in tow, I went back to Station #83. This time, all the garage doors were closed, and the front door was locked as before. The light was on, but no one answered to me knocking. That’s when I looked to the side, and saw the door bell. I didn’t exactly hesitate, and just sorta… pushed on it lightly - hoping for a buzz, a ding dong, whatever. It wasn’t what I got.

Immediately, a huge siren rang out from within the fire fortress, and a female voice reminiscent of Aliens came on the loud PA system. I’ve no idea what she was saying, but it could have been, “Attention. Emergency. All personnel must evacuate immediately. You now have fourteen minutes to reach minimum safe distance.” I must say I panicked and my desire to run was overwhelming. I knew I was in big trouble, and might end up in jail for false alert. Didn’t they kill the boy who cried wolf? All this ran through my mind within a couple seconds, cause that’s how long it took for someone to appear at the front door. I wanted to crawl into a hole, but there wasn’t one about — so instead I apologized immediately and said, “I didn’t know it was gonna do that! I’m so sorry! It’s not an emergency!” The lady replied in an easy voice, “pfft, don’t worry about it, it’s just the door bell.” As she reassured me that I wasn’t going to jail, the female announcer was still going on and on in the background.

Well, I told her slowly that I needed my pulse checked for scholarship purposes. She smiled and said it was easy enough. Took my wrist, looked at her watch, I stood there silently and then she jot down on my card my pulse. Only 84, I could swear it was faster though. Weird. And as I should’ve realized, Melissa is just as nice as the man from the day before! Ahh, a relief.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 12th, 2006 at 6:10 pm and is filed under my life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.