Hard Lessons of Life

Over night we had a little rain. It looks like it was very little but we will take it and hope for more. It has been extremely dry since the snow melted and the runoff evaporated. The risk of brush fire is extremely high. There have been several during the past couple weeks but they were contained reasonably well. There has been property loss, not much but you would not think that if it were your property.

On the first day of spring break for one of our local school districts, a couple high school boys apparently wanted to see what happens when you burn a dry cattail. You can easily imagine what happened next. It was a very small grass fire with no property damage. The fire was easily extinguished which was fortunate.

They are good kids; one is an Eagle Scout candidate. They made a poor choice. They come from homes with responsible parents. So what do you do? The Fire Chief offered an option which would keep the boys out of the juvenile justice system. If they spent the next two Saturdays working eight hours each day on assigned duties to help the public safety department they would not be charged. But wait a minute, one of the boys was ready to go to a scouting weekend on the second Saturday. The chief's argument was that we all make choices and there are consequences to each and every choice. Some times the choice is poor and the consequence is hard. The chief really did not have to go much further; the parents and boys knew their only other option was the juvenile justice system.

One of our sons is a member of the fire department and was asked to chaperone the boys both Saturdays. The boys washed the grass rigs, at least one of the engines, a police department vehicle, and the bays of at least one of the stations. I think that they also learned how expensive it is to take the grass rigs and pumper out to a grass fire, even a very small one. They learned how hard it is on the personnel to fight a grass fire.

I think this was a hard lesson for the boys. I have faith this is one lesson they will take with them for the rest of their lives.