Through The Eyes of The Beholder

By Whisper

“Firemen!”

“Nuh uh. Policemen!”

“No way! It’s firemen! They go into burning buildings and rescue babies and wear helmets and get to squirt all that water and stuff. It’s firemen for sure!”

“You are SO lame! Policemen are way better than firemen! My uncle’s a policeman, and he gets to carry a gun and shoot stuff and arrest people and drive a car real fast! And he never gets speeding tickets, even when he’s not driving the police car. I know cause we got stopped and he just told the cop he was a policeman, and he didn’t get a ticket. I bet he woulda gotten the ticket if he’d just been a fireman.”

“Oh yeah? Well I met this guy who’s a fireman, and he doesn’t even have to sit inside. He just hangs onto the back. That is so neat. And, you know, this other guy I met? He gets to steer those really big trucks from the back. No kiddin. He sits in that thing up on the back of the fire engine and steers that part of it. That’s, like, one of the most important jobs cause if he did it wrong, well, that fire engine would smash into all the cars on the side of the street, and they would end up just little piles of junk metal. Even police cars.”

“Nuh uh! ‘Cause the policeman would shoot out the tires of the fire engine so that it couldn’t smash all those cars.”

“Would not! ‘Cause the fireman would squirt him with the hose and knock him down so he couldn’t shoot nobody!”

“No way! The fireman couldn’t squirt the hose when the truck was moving. That is so lame!”

“Is not! Well…, yeah…, okay. But so he wouldn’t squirt him with the hose. If that policeman shot out the tires, the guy driving from the back would just make sure that the fire engine tipped over right on top of that policeman and his car and then he wouldn’t even be able to shoot nobody! So there.”

Only the sound of sirens could interrupt the important philosophical discussion that had been going on for days between Johnny Gage and Patrick Martin. The friends stepped back off the road and watched in open mouthed wonder as a police car, the fire chief’s car, and the huge fire engine roared down the main street.

Both boys watched the same thing, but saw the event through his own eyes. The brave and powerful policeman, leading the way through the streets on the way to some big fire. The engine tillerman, guiding the huge engine through the streets without smashing into even one car on the side of the road. The policemen, with guns at their side, ready to take on the biggest, baddest man at the fire, most likely the one who had set the fire in the first place. The firemen dressed in full turnout gear, ready to rush into a fire to save burning babies.

When the excitement had passed, both boys spoke at once.

“See! Told ya!”

Johnny Tillerman Page