The thing is, I am badly in need of some sort of personal calendar or time-management system. I covet a Palm Pilot, although I know this little device would mark a dangerous intrusion of technology into the less modernized moments of my life. I scour the web relentlessly for the particular model which I believe will impose blessed order over the faltering system of propped-up old business cards with scribbled messages that currently serves as my means for remembering important events.

I sat in my first fire class tonight and looked at the class schedule and thought: good-bye, life. Farewell, free time. I offer you up in sacrifice for this goal: the yellow helmet. You see, EMS folks like me get the blue helmet, so that on a fire ground no one will mistake me for someone who knows anything about fighting a fire. Burns, yes. When there are burned or otherwise injured people on the fire ground, it's blue helmet time. But while the flames are still licking out of windows, blue helmets congregate outside on side one (that's the front of the building, in civilian speak) and try not to gawk too embarrassingly at what the yellow helmets are doing. If I can pass fire class and then the other zillion things my squad requires for me to certify, I get the yellow helmet. Yellow means I am fully prepared to ignore millions of years of careful evolution and do what human instinct wisely advises us not to do around uncontrolled fire: move toward it.

I have come to depend completely on Susan to remind me of things like dates when we're seeing friends, or having a party, or celebrating my birthday with my family. I routinely make appointments that I cannot keep because the appropriate folded business card propped against my computer has fallen face down amidst the wreckage that is my customary work environment. I could buy a little date book with attractive but unimposing pictures by Imogene Cunningham for under twenty bucks, or spend several times that on a little electronic gizmo I'll have to carry around everywhere, and what kind of decision is that for a brave new worlder like myself?

I picked up all my firefighting gear last night from the Squad in preparation for the class. I have a provisional yellow helmet that's for use only at the training academy -- it's been used by legions of trainees before me and is stained with actual soot from real training fires. That kind of gave me pause, but in a good way, the kind of way that scares you with the magnitude of a genuine new experience. Entirely new neural pathways will be formed in my brain, overriding (it is hoped) the old familiar impulses that scream RUN! at the sight of flames.

Here's what I felt like as I hefted my gear and sooty yellow helmet out to the car for the drive to the academy this afternoon: 50% I am such a stud, and 50% I look like I'm going to a Halloween party. I might have felt more studly, but the whole mass of turnout gear feels like it weighs about thirty pounds, and it puts me in a serious lean to carry most of it under one arm. What kind of firefighter carries his stuff around the neighborhood? A freelancer? Just waiting to fight the big one out of the trunk of his car?

So I sat in the class reading the schedule and thinking: I am never going to see my girlfriend again. Sure, the class only runs through December, but then starts the whole certification process to ride on the heavy rescue truck, and I might as well just start receiving my mail at the Squad. And it will all be worth it, just like the aidman evaluation was, all those nights sleeping in bunk beds punctuated by the irregular roars of a buzzer designed to wake the outermost statistical deviation of heavy sleepers. I'll go down the pole instead of the less-manly but equally useful stairs. I will wear red suspenders. I will breathe canned air and wear a yellow helmet. You can't put a price on that, in time or money.

Somebody out there must have a nice Palm Vx that they're not using. Why not sell it to me?