I remember a coworker at Reg telling me that he became a dispatcher because he was “nosy as hell.”
Is it nosiness, though? At first I thought so, and even now I maintain that there’s some truth to that, at least to some extent. We like to know what’s going on, to be considered important enough to be trusted with sensitive information. We're the first responders, the first to know that something is happening, and the first to find out what it is.
But I think there's a lot more to why I love this job, this field, more than anything. And what it comes down to is this: I'm part of something important, exclusive, and highly interconnected.
As a child, I was excluded from things. A lot. I mean, I had friends. Up until the point where he was pulled from school to be educated at home, I had Andy. And, I was, at the very least, on speaking terms with most or all of my classmates. But I was never really included, either. I never had a group, and I never felt like the people I associated with liked me all that much.
It would be easy to blame the shallowness of my peers, or the autism, or small children's lack of empathy, especially to those seen as different in ways both tangible and intangible.
But if I'm being completely honest, I don't blame the other kids. I don't even blame the normative compulsions of general human society. I was excluded because I was a difficult person, even at miniature size, to get along with. Haughty, arrogant, often performative in my displays of nonconformity, I was too insecure to appreciate the fact that people might like or dislike me for reasons out of my control. So, to take back control, I leaned into the fantasy of the martyred pariah, insisting on doing things in such a belligerent way that I would isolate myself before the group could cast me out against my will.
In fourth grade I decided that collecting broken pencil tips in a clear plastic mustard container was just the strange sort of thing that an elementary school maverick would do. It was strange, but harmless; and the teacher, by now surely exasperated by the antics of this incredibly weird child, reluctantly allowed it. Pencil tips in a mustard cup eventually became pencil shavings in a recycled bagel container, and I sank further into my elected anti-social haven.
Anti-social, however, is the last thing I would describe myself as. I love to talk. I do it so much that, in order to curb my insatiable need to overshare, I even started this blog. Despite my insecure tendency toward self-imposed isolation, I was a social butterfly. ADHD impulsivity made it impossible to keep quietly to myself, as shy children did without as much social repercussion.
It wasn't like I didn't want to be included. I remember the first time I was invited to sit with a group at lunch, back in the sixth grade, the only year I had of public middle school. That invitation changed my life.
At the time, I would sit alone with Andy at the only unclaimed table, right in the middle of the room. I felt the eyes of our peers boring into us, gossiping speculatively about the boy and girl who sat alone together every day. Whether or not the impression was indicative of reality (and the older I got, the more I believed it was in my head), it was suffocating, and despite Andy's friendship, I felt the sting of loneliness as acutely as the preteen growing pains.
When the girls sent their diplomatic representative to formally invite me to sit with them, I was unwilling to abandon my best friend. Though he insisted he didn't mind eating alone, I made it a condition of acceptance that he was allowed to accompany me.
Andy must have known how desperate I was to feel the embrace of a group, so he tagged reluctantly along. He sat at the very end of the bench, back turned pointedly to us, shielded from the girly atmosphere by his oversized jacket and bad attitude. Eventually, he was adopted by a group of boys at an adjacent table, and, now free of fraternal responsibility, I settled comfortably into inclusion I had never known before.
The feeling of being one of them was like a warm, golden glow, starting in my chest and warming me to my fingertips. I traded snacks with the other girls, engaged in the typical who-liked-who gossip, and chattered about pop culture, of which I knew painfully little, at first. I learned, though, about Nickelodeon shows I'd been forbidden from watching as a kid, movies I hadn't seen but had to in order to be considered a functioning member of society, songs that were on the top-whatever lists in the 2010s.
But my favorite thing was the extensive repertoire of inside jokes.
Inside jokes mean you're included. They mean that you have a history, and that both or all parties involved appreciate the history enough to recall that history. Reference jokes mean that somebody has been paying attention and has committed to memory the experiences shared with another. My ex used to call it "callback humor."
"You like to be in on it," he observed once. "Probably because you felt left out of things for so much of your life, that it validates you as a worthwhile investment of time."
I never fully grew out of my fondness of inside jokes. Even a decade plus later, out of middle school and into the world, I still love a good inside joke. We had plenty of them in my friend group at the school I taught at, but I left most of those connections behind when I left.
So naturally the first thing I wanted to do (socially, at least) when I started at Regional was get in on the inside jokes.
The overnight crew was keen on their running gags, so it wasn't hard to pick up on a few when my training shifts lined up with the third-shift. I'm not sure where the "your sister" jokes started, but they'd been going on since long before I got there.
"PD is en route, hot response."
"Hot response to your sister's house!"
The first time I made a 'your sister' joke of my own, the response I got made me feel just as warm and glowy as those girls inviting me to their lunch table all those years ago. As soon as the joke had left my lips, several heads turned to me from around the room. A grin spread across one guy's face, and he began to pound his fist on the desk, rhythmically chanting: "One of us! One of us!"
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| "We accept her, one of us. Gooble-gobble, one of us!" Freaks, 1932 |
He was joined by a second voice, and the din was silenced only after a call drew all of our attentions away. But still, I couldn't wipe the big, stupid grin off my face. At the time, I didn't have the words to explain why their reactions made me so happy. And it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Nothing would have come from a dissertation on the anatomy of a joke (though maybe the anatomy of your sis... never mind).
All that mattered was that there was an "us," and now, I was included.
I've talked before about how working in dispatch has given me an avenue to make connections with people I'd otherwise have nothing in common with. How being part of the public safety and first responder world gives you a sort of built-in family. Being part of something like this is all I ever wanted.
So yeah, I'm a bit nosy. I don't know a single dispatcher who isn't. We like to be clued in to the drama happening out there, to be considered trustworthy enough for sensitive information. We like to be the first to know, and the first to respond.
But at least for me, that's only part of the equation. The main source of my love for this job comes from the unparalleled feeling of being part of something important. I get to be part of the chain-reaction that starts with dialing 9-1-1 and ends with a life saved, a fire extinguished, a child reunited with his family. Those are the experiences that unite us, that make up the "us" that I am so grateful to be "one of."
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