As the holidays approach, you're likely to find the American classic A Christmas Story while flipping through your cable stations. It is one of those films that you can watch a dozen times and never get tired of it. Thinking back on our childhoods, I'd bet most of us could identify with some aspect or scene in the film.

Having grown up in the Midwest, I can't help but identify with the scene where a child dares one of his classmates to stick his tongue to a frozen flagpole in below-freezing temperatures. The kid's tongue becomes stuck, and the fire department is summoned to free him. Admittedly, there is great humor in watching a kid get goaded into a harmless act of silliness with a triple-dog dare, but it's the fact someone thought the incident was an emergency and called the fire department is what sticks with me still.

Everyday, fire departments respond to minor medical emergencies — or what people perceive as emergencies. We debate when, how or even if we should respond to calls that aren't cardiac arrests, working fires or some other “worthy” emergency. But those who worry that such responses cost too much or who think they are somebody else's responsibility are forgetting their mission.

In these trying times, good people in this country are dealing with personal emergencies every day, whether it is because of their health, finances or just the stress of uncertainty — a lot of people are on the edge. When people reach their tipping points, the fire service often is called in to send resources. We are called because we are seen as charitable and knowing.

The fire service's can-do attitude and problem-solving ability recently was portrayed in a Nextel commercial. It asked what would happen if firefighters ran the world, and it implied that we would have a better community. And that idea of the fire service being connected to the community and to charitable acts dates back to some of our most-traditional fire departments.

My wife's grandfather was a member of the Philadelphia Fire Department, serving at the Germantown station. The Germantown station was very much a part of the neighborhood and connected to its people. I've been told that firefighters maintained a garden to share food with their neighbors. An elderly person in the area had broken an ankle, and the fire department showed up to build a ramp or fix a step with materials they got from a local hardware store. The fire department personnel in that station knew every business owner and most of the families in that neighborhood. The station is very different today, but the stories live on.

Recently I went back to Iowa to lecture to a mostly BLS crowd at a rural EMS conference. Every few years, I sign up for what I can only describe as the humbling experience of speaking to people who do this job for nothing, yet do it with more heart and desire than you can imagine. The conference was held at the local fairgrounds, and I sat grumbling about the AV set up in the cattle barn while waiting until I could have one of those prized Iowa steaks for lunch. Throughout the morning lecture, I watched the Boy Scouts serve breakfast and a group of ladies from the local woman's auxiliary peel potatoes. In particular, I watched one woman who was wearing a surgical mask.

She was wearing a shirt that I couldn't quite make out, so despite my fears of flu, I decided to get closer. I was surprised to see the shirt identified her as the recipient of a donor heart. She was on anti-rejection medication and needed the mask to protect her from the crowd.

The local EMS and fire department had become this woman's community within a community. They had been with her through the tough times of her old heart and the triumphs of her new one. Somewhere EMS had made a gallant attempt to save the donor, and for that she was grateful. She was simply there to help out and support the EMS association's fund-raiser anyway she could.

After Sept. 11, 2001, fire and EMS agencies were given a gift from the American public and the world — their love and admiration. Yet at the same time we began to harden our stations and slowly withdrew into them. This has distanced us from the community and begun to change our perception of who and why people need our help.

While fire and EMS have leveraged the goodwill and tradition of days past into higher salaries and benefits, the public has begun to question how and why we do business the way we do. As most of the fire service's work is EMS, that experience is offering the most common opportunity to define the value of our service.

As we miss the details of so many EMS runs under the strain of call volume or understaffing, our worth is coming into question. As we “process” calls, people start to become widgets. For every action there is an equal or opposite reaction, and this depersonalization of EMS or public-assistance calls by fire crews is beginning to take its toll.

Take, for example, this blog post I found in a local newspaper.