You'd have a hard time finding anyone at my rescue squad who is less enthusiastic about becoming an emergency driver than I am. Some people really do enjoy it -- they'd much rather be up front driving the ambulance than in back dealing with the messiness of human suffering. I admit that there is a certain excitement that comes with flying down the highway at high speeds, with siren wings bright with swirling red and white lights. (I'd call it more a suspension of reality than a thrill.) But, strange as it may seem, I like being in back with the patients.

Unfortunately, that's not all my squad wants of me. For rather complex reasons that cannot be explained without a boring lecture on internal structure, it's not particularly cool for me to be a firefighter on the heavy rescue squad without also being capable of driving the ambulance. It's seen as shirking my responsibilities. So, while it is well within my power (and inclination) to resist this kind of social pressure, I elected to go with the flow and take the Emergency Vehicle Operations Course at the county fire & rescue training academy.

To be honest, the prospect that I would be able to pass the driving course was so remote that it seemed like a nice gesture of goodwill, and nothing more. The ambulance is a hulking Freightliner -- like driving a commercial truck, far larger than anything I had ever handled in my life. It feels like I'm trying to pilot a ship. The first time I was set loose on the driving course, many orange cones were squashed flat, sent flying, or otherwise dispatched.

Around the course I go, backwards and forwards through the various exercises. The stations are titled in the same way that kayakers and canoeists give names to popular stretches of whitewater. Alley Dock. Diminishing Clearance. Offset Alley. Serpentine.

One day we go to the nearby police training center for skid instruction. We're all paired up and put into old beater cars, each with dings and dents too numerous to count, as the instructors spread a slick fluid on the driving course. Then, one car at a time, we're instructed to accelerate down a ramp and slam on the brakes, sending us into a wild and rather terrifying skid. The world spins and gradually stops. Then we line up to do it again, practicing techniques to regain control of the car. The instructors put down a line of three cones directly in the path of our skids. "Here are three children crossing the street," they tell us. "Don't kill them."

I come flying down the ramp and pound the brakes as I hit the entrance to the course. The back end of the car starts spinning around on me and I release the brakes and countersteer, but I overcompensate and instinctively hit the brakes again and the rear end swings around in the other direction and I hear the thud as I take out one cone. I drag it about thirty feet under the car.

Again. I come flying down the ramp and pound the brakes. Car starts to skid, rear end swinging around and as I countersteer I feel the wheels pick up some friction, just enough. Our heads jerk sideways and then the other way as the car swings around the line of cones and straightens up. The three cones remain standing. Success.

The rest of the test is in an ambulance. We do a road driving test, just like I remember from when I got my license at age 16. I'm actually confident in this portion of the test because I'm a pretty careful driver out on the street. Then we must run through the (non-slicked) cone course in under 8 minutes, touching no more than three cones. Here I offer myself little hope of success; the vehicle still feels too large, too foreign to me. So I'm relaxed in my hopelessness, and take my time. I touch one cone and complete the course with a time of 7:58.

I pass the class. Yay. The thing is, that wasn't really the way I expected things to turn out. There's still plenty of time before I actually have to drive emergency calls -- I'll have to pass a detailed area-knowledge exam and a bunch of other tests. But... me, in the driver's seat? I can hardly see it.