By Bill Adams
Last month’s column was a tongue-in-cheek tirade on sexism camouflaged as chauvinistic behavior which is one of the definitions of xenophobia. This column was intended to continue the xenophobic topic, however, there’s an entire troop of 600-pound gorillas in the room that the fire service should address first both individually and in their totality. The idiom “there’s a 600-pound gorilla in the room” is defined by the dictionary as “a major problem or controversial issue that is present but is ignored or not discussed because it is uncomfortable to do so.” Sorry folks – those gorillas are not going away on their own.
To dispel any claim of this writer’s tacit approval of chauvinistic behavior, this disclaimer is proffered: Vicious and vindictive sexism and racism have no business in any firehouse and should not be tolerated.
Teasing or Harassment?
Teasing in firehouses, also known as busting chops, has been going on for time immemorial. It most likely started when one firefighter hid the spittoons in the day room and another procured a bag of road apples from the horse stalls and hid it under the lieutenant’s bunk. Back then, that probably was considered good-natured horsing around. Times have changed. Too many people today get their noses bent out of shape over seemingly trivial matters.
Similar in meaning as busting chops is the terminology busting coglioni which is commonly used today. It was a topic at the Raisin Squad’s morning coffee. It created more opinionated discussion than passing judgment on the recent spate of fires on the morning news. Our resident do-gooder loudly proclaimed we shouldn’t say busting coglioni because it might offend a particular ethnic group. One white hair retorted: I married into that group and my father-in-law says it all the time. Another said: It ain’t no big deal. I heard it on the television the other night on an NCIS rerun. Yet another declared: It’s gotta be legal cause it’s in the dictionary.
Some of the social security recipients around the coffee table said old people could be – but don’t necessarily have to be – considerate when busting chops or coglioni. We all agreed the young ones should cut us some slack because white hairs are always forgetting stuff. That’s why we put our meds in those containers labelled for each day of the week. And, that’s why we always write lists and notes to ourselves. A good day is remembering later where we put them.
At coffee a couple days later, it was decided that it’s society’s fault the world is going to hell in a handbasket. After all, do you think old-timers would blame ourselves? One raisin hit the nail on the head lamenting: “That’s all you hear on the damn news is people whining and complaining about being woke, intolerant, prejudiced, bigoted and not diversified.” In our ranting and raving about those topics we didn’t name names or specify political parties. We try to be careful not to break the unwritten rule of keeping politics and religion out of the firehouse. But gorillas are something that can’t be ignored.
Gorillas?
What, if anything, should the fire service do about those 600-pound gorillas known as wokeness, intolerance, prejudice, bigoty and diversification? Although they are often collectively known as political correctness, it might be a good idea to identify them individually. It might be a better idea to develop a pre-plan to address them – no different than pre-planning for the big one on Main Street. Should a fire department bury its head in the sand and hope it is never on the receiving end o