If you find something you can’t explain, but it starts explaining things to you, leave it behind and never look back. -Intellectual Shaman

Things run slowly at a firehouse, until they don’t.

Carl was easing into his late 30s. He had one divorce behind him, no kids, and he wasn’t going to do that again. He loved the bullshitting, weightlifting, and teenage antics that happened before a call.

“If a guy were to get a bunch of chickens and raise em up, could he theoretically compound his money by hatching a bunch of chicks?”

“No. No. That would never work. You have to feed hens and take care of them; their just like women.”

“But what about roosters?”

“No. No. Roosters will tear each other apart. What you need to do is move to China and raise cats. We know cats can take care of themselves. Then find abandoned warehouses that need extermination. Turn the cats lose to eat the rats. Then sell the cats to restaurants.”

The siren wailed. “We have a 300-pound fat woman who has fallen in the park. Greg, you’ve been working out; you got this one. Where’s Pete?”

“I’m in the bathroom. Somebody stole the toilet paper! How many times do I have to tell you; only 4 plies per wipe!”

“In case it’s a heart attack, you’d better bring the shock kit.”

Right-sizing fat women, wrangling cats out of trees, and playing monopoly in the evenings with immature alpha-males is fun for a season, but after a while, even the best jobs are like an endless winter when the spring won’t come.