Little Boy and his fire truck

I want to share a story about a little boy and his fire truck. There are two boys, but I’ll get to that.

The first little boy is an amazing boy. This boy is the son of my now ex-girlfriend. While he can be seen as a handful, as a complex little boy deep down he is amazing. Throughout the last year I got to know this boy very much. I fell in love with this boy. The last time we got to spend together we talked about his Nintendo Switch, his dinosaurs (he’s obsessed with dinosaurs and knows a lot about them), we even talked about his Pokemon cards. This day he even gave me 3 cards, sadly I left them there. However, way before that this young boy did something truly kindhearted and thoughtful. He had a Matchbox fire truck. His idea after asking his mother was to give me this fire truck. See I am a firefighter, and my job currently is to drive the fire truck. He gave me the truck and for the next couple of months, I would show him where this fire truck rode with us as I was on shift. His reactions and questions were priceless. Deep down what is truly amazing is how this boy and his sister are being raised. Their mother has raised them with kindness, thoughtfulness, and compassion. She works her butt off and guides them through life to be children of God. She bends over backwards for them and ensures that all their needs are met. A huge shout out to her for doing all of this as a single parent.

See what this little boy and I have in common is that we are both obsessed with certain things. As a young boy myself I was obsessed with fire trucks. His obsession as I mentioned is dinosaurs. If I am ever on “Who wants to be a Millionaire” and I have a question about dinosaurs, I am using him as my lifeline. I remember as a kid going to my grandparents who lived down the street from a volunteer fire station. The siren would sound signaling a call and this little boy would run out to the curb to watch which cars would pull in and which fire trucks would pull out. Downright obsessed. Gosh, literally as I’m writing this, I am welling up inside thinking about her son who out of the kindness of his heart gave me his fire truck. Kudos to her for her incredible job raising those kiddos.

In closing, this fire truck still rides with me. It is strapped into my helmet as a reminder of two things, the little boy who gave it to me and his kind heart, as well as the man whose helmet its on and the little boy he used to be who is now living his dream.