Look Cute, Here Come the Firemen!

I have a thing for firemen and while I don’t have any idea where this thing for them came from, I can certainly tell anecdotes about what continues to fan the flame (pun absolutely intended!)

Last week I got a card in the mail from my friend The Nun. The Nun and I went to high school together and have been friends since we were 14 - over half our lives. On the card was a picture of two kittens up in a tree. The inside of the card said “Look cute, here come the firemen!” I laughed so hard, I cried. What would make me laugh at this card like that? Well to answer that we go back to the year 2000… or somewhere around then.

I was living in Atlanta with my roomie Ginger Spice. My sister Rockette lived up there, too. The Nun and Edelweiss (another high school friend) had come up to visit us. One of our favorite things to do when we all got together was spend a few hours at this place we called The Nail Factory. (Ginger and I went there all the time.) It was run by this crazy Vietnamese woman who barked orders in another language (which she possibly came up with) to her manicure minions. It really was entertaining because you would walk in and she would bark orders at you, too, but in Engrish: “You! Pick colah! Sit down dare!” Her hand gestures indicated you were to pick a nail polish color and sit down “there” by one of the manicure minions’ stations. It made us laugh every time we walked in.

So with beautiful nails and toes bestowed upon the five of us during our time in The Nail Factory, we walked out of the entertaining establishment and piled into my car. My "car" at the time was a 1987 black chevy suburban (which is another entry here altogether). It really wasn’t what you pictured five cute girls to be driving around town in Atlanta in but it was a great car. We started to head home, admiring our nails and feeling extra gorgeous, when one of us noticed a fire truck right next to us. Lo and behold the fire truck was chock full of fireMEN who were EQUALLY as gorgeous as we were! Never mind that we were in Atlanta and they were probably all gay - they were lovely to look at.

The firemen started flirting with us, so we flirted back. I don’t remember the exact exchange that went on but flirting is always funnier when you are in separate vehicles. After a minute or so of this The Nun said “Wow, we should crash the car so that they’d have to stop and rescue us!” The rest of us were nearly in tears laughing so hard at the thought. I was so amused that I didn’t notice the fire truck was now in our lane in front of us. I finally registered that the faces of the firemen were straight ahead and had turned to slight panic - my sister and friends were screaming “STOP! STOP!!!” I slammed on the brakes… nearly making The Nun’s joviality a REALITY.

Luckily we didn’t crash the car but the firemen knew exactly what had happened. They were laughing again, and us girls were crying hysterically with laughter at that point. I did have to pull the car off the road until I could collect myself enough to drive, this time.

So... many thanks to The Nun for sending me that card and giving me a great trip down memory lane - I don’t think I’ve laughed like that since the day the Fireman Fiasco happened!