So the other day I was walking my oldest son and our friend’s daughter home from school. As we neared our apartment, he noticed that there was a fire truck at the end of the block with its lights on.

“Dad! Dad! Dad! Can we go look???”

He is very excited about fire trucks. He’s six, he also knows that firemen and cops give him stickers sometimes.

“Absolutely!” I said. Because fire trucks are cool.

The little girl rolled her eyes. She is seven and not as easily impressed by anything that isn’t a princess riding a unicorn. But she trudged along.

As we arrived at the fire truck, an ambulance pulled up with the full light show. The EMT’s jumped out and grabbed the gurney and rushed into a building.

“What are they doing dad?” my son asked.

“Well, they’re helping somebody who’s sick or hurt,” I explained.

We stood there admiring the fire truck for a couple minutes, and the Paramedics reappeared rolling the gurney. Uh-oh, I thought. “Hey, kids, let’s uhhhh…go anywhere else!”

“Why do they have the sheet all the way over that person’s face?” the little girl asked.

Sigh. “Umm, because he’s cold?” I said.

Just then a gust of wind briefly revealed the deceased, a paramedic noticed that kids were watching, swore and quickly recovered the guy.

“Wow, that guy looks really sick,” The little girl said.

“Yeah,” my son nodded solemnly.

“Yep those guys are working hard to keep him warm…and speaking of cold, hey, who likes ice cream?” I shouted.

“Yayyyyyy!” they yelled and forgot all about the corpse.

So…a big sorry to Dr. Brains, I kind of showed our kids their first dead guy.

Drinks on me.