Annie, Annie are you ok?

For generations of Americans, fighting fire has always been a male dominated sport. Very few women participate in this strenuous and often times dangerous public service. There is a spattering of females in the fire service today, but they are a hardy breed. They have to be, if they want to survive the constant Tom Foolery found within the ranks of fire departments. Participating in and encouraging practical jokes is second nature to longtime firemen. The one cardinal rule is you don’t ever mess with a comrade's turnouts. No sharp objects hidden inside the boots, no hiding his gear, no icy-hot smeared inside his fire hood. Besides not messing around with one of the brethren's turnouts, pretty much everything else in a firemen’s life is up for exploitation and amusement.

It certainly is deemed OK to take the breastplate and cute blue jumpsuit off the "CPR-Annie" training manikin and put them on a live, petite, blonde-haired young lady. Go ahead and remove CPR-Annie’s plastic face mask and carefully place it on our afore mentioned young lady. Add some clean white tennis shoes to her wardrobe and— voilà. Who cares that the CPR test you are about ready to take is 50% of your final grade and one of the last steps before becoming a certified Emergency Medical Technician? How could you feel nervous when taking your final test?

By now I had practiced performing CPR in class till I could do it in my sleep. Following protocol, I would mundanely kneel down and shake Annie’s shoulder and shout, “Annie, Annie are you OK?” That’s when this new, improved Annie sits straight up and shouts back, “YES, I’M OK!” I grabbed both her shoulders and slammed her back down to the floor so hard I knocked the wind out of this new actor, but I did no permanent harm.

Now, standing off to the side in the shadows of the engine bays(having completed this important part of my test), I got to watch other rugged firemen shriek like little girls, and some even started to cry, after getting a huge shock from a very alive Annie— those were the best. Each subsequent, "Annie, Annie, are you OK?" victim would stand off to the side of the improvised training room pretending not to be watching the next classmate step forward to ask Annie if she was OK. We intently watched as one of our most macho fire guys knelt down to shake Annie's shoulder. When she sat bolt upright, he leaped a foot in the air and traveled 20 foot backwards without touching the floor till he slammed into the wheels on one of the fire engines— that was a pretty good one, too.