Here is my son, M, the fireman along with his mug shot when he was young and as an adult father. Well, he’s not really a fireman or ever wanted to be. However, you can see by the picture, he still likes playing with fire in his adult years. He’s currently working on his doctorate at a western university. He works in a lab at the university and tests hypothesis. He seems to like it and I’m just sure he was born with this ability.

You see, when he was the boy in the picture, he learned about calling 911 at school. One Sunday afternoon after church, he decided he would test this hypothesis to see if it worked. After the family had finished a relaxing dinner, I told Mammy that I was going down the street and around the block to talk with a church associate. When I got there, he was outside admiring his new truck. The next thing I know a fire engine comes up the street with its loud siren and turns the corner on the block to my house. I said let’s hop in your new truck and see where the fire is. I forgot to mention this was in the winter in Wyoming and it was cold and snowing heavily. No sooner had we turned the corner than I noticed the fire truck was in front of my house. There were six or seven volunteer firemen dressed in their winter garbs ready to put out the nearest thing that looked like a fire. I jumped out of my friends new truck and started walking up to my door with a fireman walking in a hurry in front of me. He didn’t knock but just opened the door and asked if we had a fire. At that same time my wife was on the phone talking with the fire dispatcher. She asked if we had a son name M. She indicated we did and the fire dispatcher said he had called 911 and said there was a fire in his bedroom. My son had used the phone in our bedroom to call and test his hypothesis. My wife and I apologized to the dispatcher and firemen and they all went home (I could have used them six months later on the 4th of July when I lit a bottle rocket which landed on my neighbors house and smoldered there for 10-15 minutes). Well, needless to say, we sat down and had a heart to heart with our son, M. We explained that he should have talked to us about his 911 hypothesis before taking action. Worse than calling 911 was the fact that he had lied about there being a fire in his bedroom.

As you can image, Mammy and I felt obligated to make a big donation to the volunteer fire department that year. I now worry that he works in the lab of a well-known university and still has the desire to test his hypothesis. I hope he checks with his professors before he does and explains to them what he is doing. We are retired now and have limited funds to support our son’s hypothesis testing. Most doctorate students are flat broke and M is no exception. If something catches on fire at his university, we have south of the border contacts to get fake I.D.’s. very quickly.