Wet hair, apply shampoo, rub thoroughly into hair, rinse, repeat.

I have always found directions for using shampoo to be rather ridiculous.

That is to say; if you have a chainsaw and a bottle of shampoo in front of you, which one could you most likely pick up and use without reading the directions?

If you said “shampoo”, then congratulations. You just might be smart enough to tackle the more complex chainsaw.

Question: if you have to read instructions before using shampoo, then should you be permitted to engage in more complicated personal hygiene tasks that require using soap, shaving cream, toothpaste, deodorant or (Dear God; grab the kids) a razor?

Wet, apply, rub in, rinse, repeat.

The fire service knows something about this phenomenon of “repeat”, don’t we?

The first thing that we would probably do to memorize this complex task would be to give it an appropriate acronym. Let’s see: W-A-R-R-R!

Hmmm. “War” pronounced like a pirate or Cat Woman would say it; take you pick.

In order for us to learn, we must repeat what we do several times. Hell; in order for us to TEACH a class, we need to review the subject matter repeatedly to get it right.

So, teaching and learning must be done by doing the same task over and over again. But, this time honored and proven learning tool should stop there.

It was never meant for us to repeat our mistakes and especially where men and women have died and data exists that, if read and then taught to firefighters, could reduce the chance that they could be repeated.

Either we are not reading the available information or we need to read the shampoo bottle before using it. Which is it? It could be both!

I know that Bill Carey will be posting a very analytical review of the 2009 LODDs. How many of you will take the time to read it? I know that I will, because I know how to use “shampoo” and I’m sure as Hell going to learn and then teach the lessons learned from the deaths of our brothers and sisters. When you do this, you are honoring them every day.

Do any of you ever look at developing trends in data?

For instance; how many times have we seen “lack of communications” in the LODD report of a fire ground death?

Is it because of a lack of radios or a lack of talking? Could it be confusion over radio frequencies? Perhaps there were so many others talking that no one heard the “may-day”.

Regardless, we have seen it A LOT and continue to see it in reports. I would venture to guess that Communications gets little-to-no training on many departments. Here’s your radio. Leave it on Channel One. You don’t need a spare battery.

Leaders: we have to do a better job.

Firefighters: you have to FORCE your leaders to do a better job.

We should NOT have to hold each other accountable with a conscious effort.

As firefighters; as brothers and sisters, we have sworn to have each others’ back. There should be no excuses, so put away the finger-pointing, cut out the “poor me” crap and if you have to get pissed off to get something done, then I hope that you are over-achievers!

We should have turned the corner years ago in dealing with heart attacks, apparatus and POV accidents while enroot, reading smoke and doing proper size-ups, knowing how and when to vent and knowing when to back the hell out of a structure.

But, still, we keep tripping over those directions found on a bottle of shampoo, because you’re going to get wet, you’re going to work up a lather, someone’s going to rub it in, everything will rinse out in the end, so, we will repeat it!

And just like “shampooing”, we will close our eyes when we do it.

What; no one told you to close your eyes when you shampoo?

Ooh; that’s got to sting!

To close, I will paraphrase the warden in the movie “Cool Hand Luke”:

Get your mind right or you’ll wind up in the box!

TCSS.

The article as submitted is published under The Adventures of Jake and Vinnie© umbrella and is the intellectual property of Art Goodrich a.k.a. ChiefReason. It is protected by federal copyright laws and cannot be re-printed in any form without expressed permission from the author. You may read other works by the author at www.chiefreasonart.com.