In a message dated 05/04/2000 9:15:09 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< I think I'm going to itch for the rest of the night just thinking about
 that.  Glad you lived to grace the list with that bravado stuff.  Shame,
 shame but, I'm sure a lot of us look back at some of the stuff we pulled in
 our past and wonder how we missed the clorination of the gene pool effects.

  >>
Yeah well, the real reason I invented the word "Yidiot" was for my own
personal use.  Sometimes I smack myself on the forehead and say "Yidiot!"

I usually tried to be careful about wearing my mask though.  I started
firefighting in California; they seem a little ahead of the East coast about
safe firefighting practices.  We even had to wear our masks for car fires
(burning upholstery can give off phosgene -- if I recall correctly that was
the hazard).  There are a lot of old retired firemen out there with COPD
because they didn't wear their masks for things like that, or for overhaul
after the fires.  They just didn't know about a lot of this stuff years ago.

I distinctly remember being ridiculed at my department here because I donned
my mask for a car fire -- I hadn't been with this department very long.  But
now they are all doing it.  That business will take you out one way or
another if you don't do the safety stuff.  If you don't buy it on a fire now,
you will buy it from a lot of fires years later.  This is really making me
think back now.  I hadn't thought about some of this stuff for years.