[ WP ] You 're a bomb defuser . Ranked number one , saving thousands of lives . Your trade secret ? You have no idea what you 're doing .

It was a slow news night, and a great human interest story. The device was discovered in cafeteria of a children's hospital my daughter had stayed at. It was in a Sponge Bob backpack of all things, an ugly tangle of wires, explosives and an odd digital mechanism that was counting down in fits and starts - with nearly no time at all on the clock. 
 
 I had been one floor up, receiving condolences from the staff when the fire alarm went off and the screaming started. 
 
 Their, would n't have been time for anyone else to arrive. No time to evacuate, no time for safety equipment, no time for anything really. 
 
 Their was some dramatic footage of me hunched over the device, my face calm, but sweat staining my shirt. Pulling the mechanism apart, clipping the wires and finally removing the explosives - and setting them gently to one side. And then, their on camera, I put my face in my hands, and wept. It was that footage that made me a hero I guess. And the photo that was taken outside of the hospital of the children mobbing me. Wrapping their stick thin arms around me, their little hospital robes flapping in the wind and their thin pales faces looking up at me with adoration. That and fact that I had just lost my child, but saved so many others. That a man, who had lost so much, could find redemption in saving so many. 
 
 Since then, I've defused other devices. Somehow surviving, dispute my carelessness and lack of knowledge. Nothing quite as personal or spectacular as what happened in that evacuated cafeteria, beneath the fluorescent lights, and the impartial eyes of camera and the mural's cartoon animals. 
 
 But that's going to change. That first device would n't, could n't have worked - but the next one will. You see, you can learn a lot from reverse engendering the work of others and you can build something amazing out of broken and discarded parts. 
 
 I'm going back to the hospital. My daughter had more than one backpack.
