Serendipity

Another entry in the "you cannot make this shit up" department . . . 

This is a very big department in my world.

On Monday the meeting format is to read a paragraph out of the book as a topic generator.  The guy today read this:  "We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick.  Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too.  We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend.  We avoid retaliation and argument.  We wouldn't treat sick people that way."

As luck would have it I was moved to speak.  Sitting right behind me was a man whose nickname begins with "Poor."  As in: "Hi, I'm Poor Seaweed."  I know - it's not a great nickname.  At one time it was kind of tongue-in-cheek funny but in my five years here I've never heard this guy do anything but bitch about the circumstances of his life.  I mean we're supposed to get better, right?  My patience - wafer-thin on my most tolerant day - had been steadily eroding with Poor Dude.  He also spends about half the meeting fucking around with his cell phone, egregious enough in my book but then he usually shares.  I'm not going to listen to you but I expect you to listen to me.  A hanging offense.

One of my schticks when I talk in meetings is to mention that I care a lot more about myself than I do about anyone else.  I hope that most people know I'm mostly joking in this regard but also trying to make sure that I stay personally honest about my oblivious self-absorption.  Everybody thinks about themselves a lot - I just want to make sure that I don't go overboard with it.  

As I finished this sentence Poor Dude yells out: "No shit!"

This would have been funny in a small circle of friends chatting after the meeting but in a large group it was quite disruptive.  I wasn't offended by the comment - I was offended by the delivery, the timing.  It caused a reaction - people laughed, a couple of conversations started up, there was a general hubbub.  My train of thought was obliterated and this is hard to do to me.  I'm pretty quick on my feet and can weather a lot of chaos but as I had a bit of a resentment against Poor Dude anyway and as he broke a few of my cardinal rules of meeting protocol I was enraged.  I'm not kidding - I was pissed.

I turned around, right in the middle of a meeting with 50 attendees, and said: "Are you sharing now?"  I waited a couple of beats and added: "Go ahead - the floor's all yours - do you have anything else you want to say?" and then I just looked at him for what seemed like a long time.  I'm not sure if the background noise I could hear was uncomfortable tittering or a continuation of the general disruption but I was too furious to parse it out.

I tried to continue my share but I had to bite it off.  I was simply too angry at that point to talk about the passage trying to help me learn the importance of not getting angry at someone else.

Poor Dude - who I consider a friend and who is genuinely a nice man - apologized to me after the meeting.  I thanked him, told him I'd get over it, then flatly stated that I was angry.  I could tell he felt bad.  His behavior reminded me that there is a lot more to this Program than not drinking and going to some meetings.  There's a lot of work to do or I'm going to get stuck in the mud - I'm going to be repeating the same behavior over and over.  Upward and onward.  No treading water.  No dog paddling.

I talked to a few friends after the meeting and also called my sponsor about this incident.  I wanted to know if I seemed unreasonably angry.  Newer people said I didn't seem that bad, that it's hard to get your train of thought broken like that.  One guy with some time said something along the lines of "Poor Dude needs to keep his fucking mouth shut."  My wife's sponsor said that he acted like a real jerk.

I'll tell you this: once I was angry I was not in charge any more.  I could feel things spinning out of control.

The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us.