Well, I guess this is where it begins. I'm Todd Evans, it says so on my license, passport and
birth certificate but to the 42 people on my fire company ... I'm Mater. [may-ter]
You may be wondering how a person picks up such a nickname, and I'll get to that a little later. However first I wanted to let the people know what this blog is and why I'm writing it.
Coming up in December I'll have been apart of my fire company for nine years; which seems
crazy to me since I joined the company when I was 16-years-old as a junior firefighter back in 2010. In these almost nine years I've had four chiefs, three presidents and made a lot of memories. It's because of all these memories that now this blog exists. So all the observations I've made and insights I've gleamed have somewhere to live besides knocking around the inside of my head, and hey maybe someone reading them might find them interesting or helpful.
Now to get back to the origins of the nickname Mater.
Like I mentioned earlier, I joined my fire company when I was 16 therefore I was easily the youngest member. When the annual installation dinner came around in January I had only been a member for little more than a month so I didn't know many people too well yet. At the dinner I sat at the table with the next youngest members and their girlfriends. The next youngest members were a couple of 21-year-olds and couple of 20 somethings.
I made some small talk and polite conversation but I guess I was pretty quiet. When I got up to use the restroom the salads had just been served. Returning to the table I found the grape tomatoes in my salad had multiplied to a table's worth. As I continued picking at the salad not acknowledging the added tomatoes one of the guys says:
"So Todd you like your tomatoes?"
The table erupts in laughter and a few mix drinks later I was dubbed Tomater; which in the following weeks was shortened to just Mater. Some of those guys from that night are some of the better friends and acquaintances I've made in my relatively young life.
That's not as interesting of an origin story as say Spider-Man but I'll take it.
See you at the big one.
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