Influences of Behavior

Many people look up to firefighters, especially younger kids and teenagers. If we are out in public, we make it a point to be on our best behavior and to look as professional as we can, even though we are far from being professional. We can get rowdy, and obnoxious, and so on. We are human. We need to have a little fun somehow. Even when we are out on our own hanging out or something, we have to be good. It looks really bad on the department and town if we go out raising kain and act stupid. And it is not like we can just. . .not be with the fire department whenever we want. Everyone in the town of Pennington knows all of our faces; they know we are part of the fire department. We can honestly never hide. With that being said, always being watched is somewhat of an incentive to be mature and act like we are in the position that we are in. We want the respect of not only the adults in the community, but of the children looking up to us too. Not bragging by no means, but us as firefighters have an impact on the children that see us while in uniform and out. I can’t begin to count the times I myself have been out at walmart, or at the park with my friend, and a kid comes up and asks how I’m doing and how the department is doing. They remember us when we go to the schools and talk to them, so they just come to talk to us whenever and wherever they see us. A few of our members have a bit of a language problem (if you know what I mean), and it would look really bad if they were out cursing every breath and some kids that look up to us heard them. That would make them think it was cool, since they look up to us, so they would start using those words, and they would get in trouble and say they can use those words because the firefighters do… it would look really bad on the department. That is why we always try to be professional, even on our spare time, out in public.