Winter of 2005 and I’m staying in the dorms at the fire academy. After finishing volunteer academy I decided it was time to pursue firefighting as a career. I decided to stay in the dorms mostly because of the distance I would have to commute, but also for the experience.

Life in the dorms was actually pretty good. We had shared rooms with bunk beds. I was assigned the top bunk. About a third of the class stayed in the dorms. We had a chief who stayed with us l, each “shift” had a Lieutenant and we took turns being the Captain for the week.

It was my turn to be Captain and things were going well. Chief walked into the classroom and said they received complaints about cadets smoking in front of the building, which was part of downtown, and leaving a mess of butts on the ground. My job was to make the Lieutenants go outside and pick up all the butts. Not a very exciting task, but it did make everybody think twice about leaving a mess again.

Dorm life wasn’t always fun. We were responsible for keeping the dorms and kitchen area clean, but we had a problem with dishes being left in the sink. The night before I had sat down to eat beans and toast, a traditional British meal, while studying for our test the next morning. I finished studying and went off to bed.

Next morning before the test, Chief walked up to the podium with a plate in his hand. He didn’t look happy. He said he was tired of seeing dishes in the sink and the kitchen dirty. He held up the plate and said we were no longer going to have kitchen privileges. To this point nobody had owned up to leaving the dishes, but this one was mine. I raised my hand and apologized for leaving this plate in the sink the night before. Chief was glad somebody owned up for once, but he was still unhappy. Needless to say we didn’t have many incidents with dishes in the sink after that.

The trash can… that’s a tough one to explain. We never did find the culprit this time though.

Evenings were usually spent studying and doing chores, but that was not always the case. The projector in the classroom was used to watch movies and sports. The store room was often used as a place to get drunk, even though it was against the rules to have any alcohol on campus. One night in particular was the night of the trash can incident.

Thing was said to the chief and I don’t think administration ever knew, but it was spread around that somebody apparently used the trash can in the bathroom instead of the toilet to do their daily business. From then on everybody talked about who it was that took a drunken dump in the trash can. We never did find out who.