Sam has had a longtime fetish with firemen. Before he could talk, he was already obsessed with all things fire engine. He saw his first fire engine when he was just over a year old at a play group at Rockwood Park. He wasn’t even fully walking yet but he was all over that thing, pulling up on it, more interested than the 3 and 4-year-old boys there. And when the fire truck left, we were the last ones left in the parking lots waving goodbye and they turned on their sirens for us.
And so it went for a couple of years — many, many visits to our local fire stations, so many that it began to be embarrassing. Then we started hitting up other fire station on the county, even heading to Henrico to share the fire-fightin’ love. We had the fire truck come for his second and third birthday parties, and he wore is red plastic fire hat ALL THE TIME, literally! He wore it to bed faithfully at night, even having it on the middle of the night when we went to check on him. He wore it in the bathtub, giving you a run for your money to take it off long enough to wash his hair. Then of course he would slap it right back on his noggin, making us wonder if he would begin growing mold on his scalp. The top of his head was always unusually warm, that was for sure, making us wondering if he brain was cooking inside his head from the trapped-in heat.
But slowly things began to change, he traded in the red fire hat for a black one. And then the day came that he just didn’t wear any fire hat anymore. Daddy Mac had been looking forward to this day but when it arrived we were sad to see the fire hat go bye-bye. And we realized that we never took a picture of him with it on in the bathtub or wearing it in the crib at 3 AM. Pirates came into vogue, Lightning McQueen and Buzz Lightyear and Woody from Toy Story. Ah, the end of an era…
From Stage Left enters Sam’s buddies Grace and Jack who gave him a belated Christmas present this week — a plastic fire hat like the one he used to wear back in the day. I watched sadly as he immediately passed it off to me. But lo and behold, he had it on the next morning and wore it school and then wore it and wore it and wore it, declaring this was his “new fire hat from Grace and Jack.” Was this hope and change we could believe in?! And it was — he wore it the next day and the next. Finally he was back in full fireman regalia, wearing his new fire hat, his fireman raincoat he hadn’t worn in eons, and his cool fire hat t-shirt. So where did we go to celebrate the return of the Prodigal Mini-Fireman? Why, Firehouse Subs on Busy Street in Midlothian, of course!
LibbY