The Firefighter Who Rescued a Teddy Bear

When I was four, my teddy bear, Mr. Buttons, fell into a storm drain. I was inconsolable. My dad called the non-emergency fire department number, not expecting much.

Twenty minutes later, a fire truck pulled up. Two firefighters climbed out, took the grate off the storm drain and fished Mr. Buttons out with a long hook. They wiped him off, gave me a little plastic fire helmet, and let me sit in the driver's seat.

I'm thirty-four now and a schoolteacher. This year I brought my class to that same fire station on a field trip. I told the story to the firefighters. One of them, an older captain, stopped and stared at me. "Was the bear brown with a red bow tie?" he asked.

He'd been the young firefighter who pulled Mr. Buttons out. He remembered. He hugged me in front of my whole class, who thought it was the best field trip of all time.