There’s a lot of terrifying things that can happen to a firefighter, but little as terrifying as what happened the other night to Tony Chemicals, and to which I guiltily say, Thank god it wasn’t me! The tones went off and Squad 18 jumped to action. Tony Chemicals ran for his bunker gear, stepped into his boots, pulled up his pants, and realized uncomfortably that there was something under his foot. For a split second he considered if he had time to remove the object, and decided it would drive him crazy if he didn’t. As the rig pullled out, his pants went down, his foot came up and his fingers found what he said felt like a wad of cottonballs. It wasn’t cottonballs. It was a squashed mouse who had chosen the boot of a two hundred and twenty pound man to take a nap in. Now, that’s terrifying. We were talking about it the next night in the kitchen, and I said something to the effect of, “Man, that’s terrifying! Thank god it wasn’t me!” To which DiBenedetto replied, “If it was you you would have screamed like a woman, Naviasky. You wouldn’t even step on the roach that time.” He was talking about the night a giant cockroach snuck up behind me in the kitchen and almost devoured me alive. “He jumped right up on the f—ing table and screamed like a girl!” (Thanks DiBenedetto, but I swear that part’s not true.) Hey, I ain’t crazy. I remember in high school when David Levi who was tough and strong and the best athlete in Randallstown came in one morning and told me that the night before he was taking out the trash in his socks and he accidentally stepped on a frog. He said he cried. Well, if a smashed frog could make David Levi cry, what would the shell-crunching feeling of a cat-sized cockroach under my shoe do to me? I’m a little bit tough, but I ain’t larger than life. So when I think about Tony Chemicals and the flattened mouse, I laugh. But still I have to say, Thank god it wasn’t me!