sassey, your career path is similar to mine except mine was in the fire service. When I started I was the first female on our department and for a long time the only woman fire fighter in the county, the first fire inspector we ever had and for a many years the only fire marshal in the state - there was one woman in the state fire marshals office but she wasn't a fire fighter and her authority was limited to hospitals and schools. I was a tomboy as a kid, the only kids in the neighborhood my age were boys so I fit in. The boys and I would ride our bikes to a city park in Louisville, Ky and play for hours in the drain ditch tunnels, which was very risky, storms in Louisville can come up really quick from the summer heat build up and when it rained it poured so much it would flood our streets so the drain tiles were not safe to play in. I also spent a lot of time in the summer on my grandma's farm between Elizabeth Town and Boston KY. We would go swimming in the creek to cool off but we had to take turns, someone had to stay on the shore watching up creek for water moccasins and blue racers, both terribly poisonous snakes. Grandma also had a big dapple gray plow horse that had never been saddled but that didn't matter, my cousin and I swore he wanted us to ride on him but he always objected and bucked and because we had no saddle we were always thrown off. That didn't matter, we would try at least 2-4 times before giving up! That's not risky, that's pretty stupid!