When you go to sign up for being a volunteer fireman there's three things they tell you before they let you sign away your right to live: (1) Make sure your wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/lover supports you, (2) make sure you're not narcoleptic, (3) breathe.

Number one is bullshit, and just for courtesy. Even the most protective of wives or girlfriends will allow their man to sign up to be a Volunteer Hero, because there is no greater aphrodesiac than the idea of your man punching through pyromanic walls to rescue a five-year-old boy. It's bullshit, though, simply because any veteran volunteer knows that the first death scare nulls any clear-thinking wife from wanting their husband to jump into open flames. It's a great divorce catalyst, though. When you nearly lose your left leg and your wife is indifferent, the end of the rainbow reveals itself to be a pot of mold rather than a pot of gold.

Number two is a joke, to create a chuckle or two to loose the junior Supermen up into signing. Even an awkward laugh is enough for the nervous to realize that the recruiters craving ink squiggles before them are just as human as they are, and they can defeat walls of flame.

Number three is the only one that matters. Because even after the potentials hear it, they almost always hold their breath as they dot the "i" or cross the "t' in their names on the bottom of that simple page. What it is is a test; in a job where breathing at the right time is the key to survival, you never breathe in the danger zone without an oxygen tank strapped to your face.

And signing that form, the acknowledgement that you have a 78.8% chance of dying within two years, is just as big of a danger zone as the World Trade Center in the middle of September. And as you face that sliver of bark with a Bic pen in your hand, you're not a fireman strapped onto a scuba tank, yet. You're the five-year-old boy.

So they test you: go ahead, breathe. We dare you.

Take in the molten ash of your grim fate.

Because the ones that work their lungs as they sign their death warrant, the swaggering self-badasses, they are always the first to die. Always.

But they don't tell you that. They never do. Not until you attend your first funeral as a volunteer.

Those wildass daredevils make the worst firefighters. Because what makes you good at it is not being fearless. It's in being afraid. Fearing the flame. Respecting it.

Because fire is not just a blind destructive force. It's not a hurricane or a tornado, or a tsunami or an earthquake. Flame is the beginning and the end. It can cook our food, it can keep us alive. It can melt us into molecules.

There is a reason the Romans chose the Sun to represent the almighty Zeus.

You fear the flame like you fear God.

The real heroes aren't the ones who save people's lives. It takes more guts to let a man die before your eyes than save him.

The real heroes are the ones who are shit scared. Who attend the funeral of a 25-year-old father while standing next to the fatherless children. The ones who cry for those children, for themselves. Who turn to their wife and tell them they're through.

And then show up at the station first when that bell rings anyway.