Freddie and Me

So what does a
soon-to-be sixty,
semi-retired,
semi-handicapped
guy with the personality of a capuchin monkey and the work ethic of a Galapagos tortoise do to make a few extra bucks? Working while on disability is the ultimate Catch-22. You're allowed to make some money, but not too much. So you wind up telling potential employers that they can't pay you a lot. One would think that one could find employment as a brain surgeon under those circumstances, wouldn't one? Well, one would be mistaken; an offer of such a position has yet to be tendered. My singing voice, for the most part, has deserted me (I'm planning to post about it soon), so playing the ol' nursing home circuit is not an option, at least for now. While bringing in some extra cash is nice, it's not the only reason for this sudden urge to be a contributing member of society; sitting home all day can drive a fellow totally bonkers. After all, how much "Judge Judy" can you watch?? Yes I know; I just posted about how I'm making my life meaningful, visiting holocaust survivors, yada, yada, yada. Well, that's gonna be just once or twice a week, and it don't bring home the bacon (figuratively speaking, of course). Well...remember when you were a kid the adults were always bugging you about what you wanted to be when you grew up? I always suspected that in the back of their jaded, overworked little minds they wanted to hear your grandiose dreams and then shoot 'em down: "yeah kid, dream on about being an astronaut...you'll wind up staring at a computer monitor in a teensy little prefabricated cubicle from 9 to 5 like the rest of us drones (cue evil laugh: hahahahaha!!)." Anyway, a lot of us answered that we wanted to be a policeman or a firefighter. Romantic, exciting occupations, to be sure. Personally, my response was always the same: I was going to be a veterinarian. After all, being a firefighter was pretty cool, as long as you didn't have to deal with burning buildings and stuff. I'd much rather have helped animals live long, meaningful lives, achieving their goals and fulfilling their dreams. Sigh. Where was I? Oh, yes, I wanted to be a vet. Or a musician. Or a mannequin. I had very low expectations for myself. Fast forward a few decades and I'm selling semi-precious stones. Yawn city! What ever happened to that wide-eyed nature boy who came home to the bungalow every day in his mud-caked Keds and dungarees, triumphantly displaying his latest frog or turtle or snake to his mom, who was just about ready to stick her head in the oven? Reality tends to get in the way, you know? Thank G-d for my buddy Heshy. Heshy got involved somehow with a program where they teach fire safety to little kids in schools. One day he approached me and asked (with a straight face, no less) if I was interested in being a fire truck. No, I replied, I'd rather be a locomotive. Then he explained himself. He had a $10,000 robot called Freddie the Fire Truck and needed someone to operate it. Finding someone to work the remote controls (driving, flashing lights, siren, eyes moving and blinking, etc.) was easy, he said. He needed someone to do the talking; he needed Freddie's voice. He explained that Freddie talked. He has a built-in voice modulator that can make James Earl Jones sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks. Whoever is doing the voice speaks into a headset mike in another room and watches the action through a camera. He thought I'd be perfect as Freddie's voice. He was right. We shot a video with Freddie and a kid we called Mayer rolling around the neighborhood talking about fire safety. We covered concepts like staying low to the floor during a fire, stop, drop and roll, stuff like that. Then we wrote a script and hired a real, live firefighter named Paul to banter with Freddie (me). I try to enunciate very clearly so my Alvin voice is understood by the kids, and I also over-inflect, like Barney (the purple dinosaur; or is that wife #2?). I think I have the inflection down pat, which is good because otherwise I'd have to put Bacitracin on it and cover it with a Band-Aid. We've already done this a few times in some local schools and I had a blast. So did the kids, and they came away with some crucial information as well. So I never grew up to be a vet. Perhaps I never grew up at all. Fact is, when someone asks me what I do for a living now, I can respond truthfully with an answer you just don't hear every day: I'm a fire truck!

Firefighter Paul