Pride or Ego?

[wyesguy24]

I have seen more and more t-shirts out there with varying slogans on them. Pride in being a firefighter damn straight. I wear my dept. gear with pride. If a tu tu had my dept. patch on it I would wear it proudly (to be honest I have a nice crimson one with.. uh sorry). What are your thoughts on these shirts like "The can't send us to hell we would put it out" and "We fight what you fear". Pride or Ego? When I first became a ff I bought the "I fight what you fear" shirt and now I've been in a couple years I find I can't wear it.

BTW: A neighbouring fd recently received a new truck with "WE FIGHT WHAT YOU FEAR" prominently written on the front of the cab, to which my D.Chief commented "What, my wife!"

[pumper41]

Here in New South Wales, Australia, a tee shirt was printed with the slogan "I'm a firefighter, If you see me running, try to keep up" on the back, with a particular dept logo on the front. Some thought it quite funny, but the dept in question did not and banned the shirts. :)

[wyesguy24]

I too have seen the try to keep up shirts. however one was for a HazMat squad the other for bomb disposal.

[RyanEMVFD]

a shirt is a shirt. as long as it doesn't have firefighting and sex or drugs or beer or anything along those lines I could care less. on our dept the members buy their own shirts so if they got one with "we fight what you fear" or something like that then that's fine. i only have a problem with the shirts that say "stupid people shouldn't breed" or something like that.

[blaze79]

I think that the shirts are cool. However, I think that they speak both "pride" and "ego". But if you want to wear one, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think I might get one!

[mcaldwell]

I think all FF's have a lot of pride and a little ego.

I don't knock most shirts, but within our dept we discourage anything that would seem to knock the people we are paid to help (the public). The "We Fight What You Fear" shirts aren't that bad, but some others in the genre are bordering on insult to anyone outside the firefighting community. More or less calling them cowards, etc, and that doesn't play well when you're trying to get a budget increase.:)