Im a firefighter.

The thing about working with primary school kids is this: Sometimes, just sometimes, they are the cutest little creatures on earth! Cuter than poodle puppies.

The other day I was belaying kids up and down the rock wall at work. I was on one side and the visiting teacher was belaying on the other side. This one kid, lets call him Hayden*, was climbing up the wall. He was smashing it and was keen as mustard when, just near the top, he made the fatal mistake of looking down. It was all over. He was stuck to that wall like someone got loose with the hot glue gun. His teacher tried getting him down by yelling at him (do teachers seriously think this will work? Why do you go to teachers college if not to learn DON’T yell at a kid who is already crapping himself?). So then I had a go coaxing him to trust the rope, alas that was also to no avail. So the Amy had a shot talking to him from the top of the tower. Nothing would work. So its what happened next that was the cute bit..
Owen came and belayed me while I climbing up the wall over to him. When I got there I told him the he was safe and that we were going to go down together. So he sat on my knee and I wrapped my arms around him and we got lowered to the ground together. When he got to the bottom I gave him a big hug (yeah its against the rules, whatchya gonna do about it?) and untied him and he calmed down.

This whole kerfuffle made me feel really happy because, even though all I had done was rescue this kid from his self constructed psychological stranglehold he thought I had saved his life. It’s a nice feeling having someone think that you’ve saved their life. I think I might become a firefighter.

*not necessarily his real name