My friend - we'll call her Alice - has three children. Alice, her late husband, and the children are all firehouse people, all volunteers.
We don't talk politics much. Alice is somewhat more liberal than her children, who post things to Facebook that make me shudder. But when I was little, my mother's best friend once slapped me and said "Your mother didn't raise you like that!". I thought she was a horrible bitch, and I keep my mouth shut with other peoples' children.
Her youngest son has been a firefighter full-time for volunteer companies, city companies, and all the time has been studying safety science. When he got his degree and looked for a job, he found one really quickly.
It was with Shell Oil. In the Arctic, operating out of a tiny town in Washington, on one of the exploratory boats. Bob's job was safety. He was busy, and happy, and had no political opinions at all on the work itself. I did, but I kept my mouth shut.
Last year they pulled him off the boats and brought him in to the corporate offices in town, where he nearly went nuts with the bureaucracy. Guys who were pulled off the boats and given titles weren't looked up to.
But he persevered. Nothing much can stop Bob if he has an opinion. He thinks he made some changes that saved lives.
But that doesn't matter now, because last night the call came through from Shell: shutdown. The whole operation. They expect Bob's part to be closed in the spring.
Alice called me in tears this morning. She knows how I feel about oil and the Arctic, she said; she could see it in my face, but oh, Bob. I started to cry. Oh, Bob. I remember Bob sitting on my living room floor the day we moved into this house screwing the legs onto my Ikea tables, then devouring a whole pizza. And his sense of humor!
So where do I go from here? He asked if I could edit his resume. Fifty times, I said, just call me. What Bob does for a living is my business only if he asks for my opinion. He's a big boy now.
I don't think I've gotten this out the way I meant to. How would you feel if you were me?