Special Steve Is In The House

It has been interesting and a lot of fun trying to assimilate into a different regional culture here in the old U.S. of A.  Make no mistake about it, this is a large country, and there are definitely some big differences in how people go about things in the various quadrants.  I can close my eyes and imagine putting a Southern belle, a Texas cowboy, an Italian from Brooklyn, a lineman from Wichita, and a tree-hugger from Oregon in the same room for a no-holds barred iron man free for all.  THAT would be an interesting conversation.

I am definitely a child of my Midwestern roots: logical, private, hard-working, unemotional.  You can just see me in Bavaria, behind a mule, plowing a field in a cold rain, my sensible boots caked with mud, moving slowly and steadily and inexorably down the rows.  My wife would look up from her sauerkraut canning when I walked in at the end of the day, and ask how the plowing went.  "Fine," I'd say, sitting down heavily in front of the fire, shucking off my wet britches.

I am not a patient man, however, and would like the assimilation to go faster.  Blindingly fast, irrationally fast, in fact.  I don't care when things that take time for everyone else also take time for me, Special Steve.  Things should happen immediately for Special Steve.  This is how life was when I used: I could change my mood from bad to good or from good to great very quickly, with a pipe or a bottle.  Now I have to do the work to effect the change that I want.  Working at things that take time.  Oy.

I am not happy with anything less than perfection, either.  It's not that I want things to be good or even great; I want them to be perfect.  No blips, no errors, no problems.  To say that I have the emotional make-up of a 5 year old would be insulting to the millions of children out there.  I aspire to the emotional stability of a 5 year old. 

Special Steve has spoken.