Lawrence City Commissioner Stuart Boley, Lawrence-Douglas County Fire and Medical firefighter Seamus Albritton, Douglas County Commission candidate Michelle Derusseau and Lawrence City Manager Tom Markus participate in the Fire Ops 101 training on Oct. 1, 2016.

There’s a specific reason I left the firefighter training this past weekend with the song “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” stuck in my head.

News to me, I can get a little claustrophobic, at least when it comes to putting a plastic mask over my face, suctioned tight with a rubber seal. Basically, they are like goggles, but extending from hairline to chin. What began as a somewhat pleasant Darth-Vader inhale-exhale as oxygen was pulled from the canister on my back did not last long. Once I was crawling around in a dark room (that we were only pretending was on fire) and looking for a dummy to save, it lost its easy pace.

The 15 people participating in the firefighter training, Fire Ops 101, were broken into four teams, each led by a firefighter. The training was organized by the Lawrence Professional Firefighters, the local firefighters union, and was meant to show city and county leaders what the duty of firefighters and first responders is like. On my team were City Commissioner Matthew Herbert and Eudora City Manager Barack Matite.

Lawrence-Douglas County Fire and Medical firefighter Jason Ray monitors a fire being used as part of the Fire Ops 101 training on Oct. 1, 2016.

Once the dummy rescue was underway, the firefighter accompanying my team, Ben Dennis, must have noticed my breathing, too. He said to keep his breathing steady with the oxygen mask on, it helped him to hum a song. He suggested a string of artists, but only Cyndi Lauper stood out to me. And so it was. I would try to hum one of her songs, and try to have fun busting my knees to save this dummy. It didn’t really work the first try, but within a couple minutes we pulled the dummy out, its reflective firefighter jacket askew, showing off its plastic midriff, and its pants coming down, but intact nonetheless. Rescued.

In reality, the space was just a blacked-out shop in the Haskell Square strip mall. You may have known the space as the former home of Miracle Video. But instead of customers, the next few hours would see me and the other trainees crawling around the room with our left hands to the wall as we searched for the dummy. They called this a “left hand search”, which was one of many firefighter terms that were thrown around, but maybe the only one I’ll remember.

It’s probably lucky I had that experience before my team met the real fire. Or as real as a fire can be that is intentionally set on a pile of pallet boards, which is pretty real. Smoke and flames and all.

Lawrence-Douglas County Fire and Medical firefighter Jen Persons gives direction to Douglas County Administrator Craig Weinaug during the Fire Ops 101 training on Oct. 1, 2016.

For that exercise, a fire truck was parked outside a metal tower designed specifically for this type of training. To a passerby, the tower can look like an odd feature of the nearby park at the corner of 19th Street and Haskell Avenue. But on closer inspection, its door and window frames are blackened with soot. The tower is part of the Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical training center, 1941 Haskell Ave. A street sign posted at the corner is topped with bisecting signs reading “Rescue Drive” and “Tower Drive.”

The real fire — with real smoke — would be the test of whether a song could help me breathe a little easier with the mask on.

My teammates and I went in crouched, then got to our knees as we opened the door to the room with the fire. The firefighter suits are bulky, and moving around made me feel like an astronaut, though without the benefit of weightlessness.

Lawrence City Commissioner Matthew Herbert uses a vehicle extraction tool as part of the Fire Ops 101 training on Oct. 1, 2016.

We crawled along the floor, going from concrete flooring to brick, neither of which offer the best comfort for your knees. The first room had been filled with artificial smoke, but once we opened the door to the room with the fire, it was the real thing.

I didn’t actually hum the song, but sung it to myself in my head, which distracted me enough from trying (and failing) to measure my own breath. With the assistance of actual firefighters, my teammates and I lugged the fire hose until it was in front of the flames. Not long after the release of the nozzle, the fire was out.

In between the dummy rescue and the fire tower we used the Jaws of Life, shattering the windows of a salvaged Dodge Voyager minivan with a metal pick and using what looked like an enormous metal lobster claw to cut through the vehicle’s exterior. Firefighters told us about the “golden hour” — the 60 minutes within which trauma patients should be treated, after which the survival rate drops. If imagination weren’t enough, some of the cars the group practiced on also had figures drawn on the windows with messages of “Help me.” Eventually, the minivan my team imagined we were saving people from looked like a sardine can with the lid peeled back. Rescued.

The resuscitation exercise we did ended up being the easiest, as far as imagined rescuing goes. The dummy was in cardiac arrest, and my teammates and I took turns pumping its plastic chest (which from the start was caved in from what I assume has been a life of much CPR practice), squeezing a plastic bubble mask to give it air and administering intravenous drugs. Once our dummy had a pulse, which was just accomplished by someone declaring that it did, we loaded it onto an ambulance. Rescued.

After the five-hour training was complete, we certainly had learned something. I think most would agree that even pretending to rescue people is no easy task, so that must say something for the real thing. And after all was done, I have to admit — as Cyndi Lauper would say — it was a little fun.