Author: Dick

I don’t think I’d touch this caption with a ten-foot Pole, Ryszard.

El Paso firefighters battle a 1977 fire.

The word “hero” is bandied about quite a bit these days. Some might even say the term is tossed about too freely. The nine firefighters who were killed in Charleston, S.C., are among the latest to be pronounced heroes.

Since 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror, the public refers to all military personnel and emergency services workers as heroes. But I am willing to bet a majority of those engaged in such occupations do not see themselves as such.

Certainly, I never saw myself as hero when I braved paper cuts as a legal secretary in the Navy. Nor did I do anything particularly heroic other than my job during the five years I worked as a firefighter. During those times — in the late 1970s — the public did not have use “hero” to describe service members, firemen and cops. In fact, some people held those who wore any kind of uniform in contempt thanks to the Vietnam war.

That’s not to say I was ever spat upon when wearing either the uniform of a firefighter or a sailor. Well, perhaps a baby or two spit up on me. And, for better or worse for me, there was that whole “love-a-man-in-uniform” thing sometimes in the small college town where I worked as a fireman.

But I wouldn’t hesitate to say that most the people I have known either in the military or fire services would have ever thought themselves as heroic. It was just what they did or do.

The nine Charleston firefighters died looking for people who others thought were trapped inside the building. So I wouldn’t at all say it was a stretch to call them heroes.

Words which are used excessively lose their vitality after time. Calling everyone who faces death by signing the dotted line and donning a uniform a hero might someday dampen the impact of really heroic deeds. On the other hand, there are a lot worse heroes one might worship than the men and women who put their life on the line for others.

Click here for more information from the city of Charleston’s Web page, which includes where one might donate to the fund established for the families of the fallen firefighters.

After finishing work a little early, I had a few minutes that I thought I could spend blogging. However, it has come to my attention that I really have nothing to blog about. That is other than the VA sent me a blood pressure prescription in the mail that I didn’t order from a doctor (a physician’s assistant in reality)whom I didn’t see. I look forward to hearing from this PA and what he has to say about sending me an unsolicited medication, the blogger said facetiously.

I’m taking the rest of the day off from blogging as well. After all, it IS Tuesday!

Speak up
will you?

At some point in my life, I came to despise mimes. Yes, I admit to being a mime-hater. But I am not a mime bigot. I think mimes have the right to do whatever they want and I won’t raise a fuss about them doing it. I also don’t discriminate against mimes. But, well if hate is too deep a word, I will just say that I despise them and have for a long time.

Pantomime can be okay and even funny. Comic Red Skelton used to perform pantomime on his TV show back in the 1960s. But pantomime was certainly not the funniest sketches on Skelton’s show.

Probably I just see mimes as being kind of annoying. It’s like many of them I have seen like to convert you to mimeism, which is probably not a word. The word “mime” does have a number of different interpretations as you can see in Dictionary.com. I certainly don’t know much about the ” … ancient Greek or Roman farce that depended for effect largely upon ludicrous actions and gestures.” I am sure it was something to do back then when there was no television or if you weren’t doing other Greek or Roman things.

I sometimes feel bad about my dislike of mimes. I shouldn’t be so hard on people who like and perform their art forms. But, the feeling usually passes.

One problem does exists in reading biographies. That is, too often I will know the ending.