Pool Party

Metaphor:  The use of a word or phrase to refer to something that it is not, invoking a direct similarity between the word or phrase used and the thing described.  (Ed. Note: Whew.  That's some definition).

Because everyone is on the edge of their seats waiting for another one of my pool postings, here you go . . . 

First of all, please don't assume that I spend an inordinate amount of time in the pool.  I do not. I am tall and skinny and pasty-white and not the kind of person that everyone loves to see hanging around any area in a skimpy, skin-tight spandex swimming suit and flip-flops.  People look away.  I know they do.

And furthermore please don't assume that I always have problems when I'm at the swimming pool.  This is factually incorrect.  I actually have many pleasant, problem-free days at the pool except for the actual swimming part which is painful and too long and consequently not pleasant.  Other than that I don't get pissed off too often and I don't stay pissed off for too long, both good things.

There's this, too: I have problems everywhere and not just at the pool.  Given the large number of pool-related crises that crop up in my life a person might assume that all the problems I have occur at the pool.  Not true.  I'm pissed off all the time, in an infinite variety of locales, and for an uncountable number of reasons, at an infinite variety of people, places, and things.  The pool seems to be a metaphor for all of the self-righteous, indignant anger that I'm usually nursing.

Anyway, my particular pool is reserved from nine to ten every morning for something called Aquafit.  This is where a bunch of very large women flail around uselessly, from the look of things, ostensibly following the direction of an annoyingly cheerful young woman who is blasting an upbeat, jazzy pop soundtrack at an elevated volume, the noise bouncing around the large concrete tomb that is an indoor pool, creating a kind of echoey cacophony.   

The obstruction to my day - and the origin of this rant - is that the pool is off-limits to us lap-swimmers from nine to ten, ironically the exact time that it would be convenient for me to swim. Fair enough - I work around the schedule, and good for these ladies for trying to stay active.  I wish my mom would have done something similar in her heyday.  However, I have to get up and get ready to swim earlier than I would like or wait until mid-morning when most of my fading resolve to swim has faded away.  The point is that I am inconvenienced.

Today I went to an excellent morning meeting and took an excellent call from a sponsee so I was relegated to the late shift.  I got there about ten and the pool was jammed.  Most of the lanes were full of lap-swimmers but about 30% were occupied by ladies who had just had exclusive use of the pool for an hour and then decided it would be OK to bounce around some more, chatting, in whatever lanes they wanted to hog.  I sat in the hot tub for a few minutes - I had gone to war with a couple of these crones before and come out on the losing end.  Bemused, I watched a young guy come in, eye the pool, enter in some negotiations with a couple of the lane-hoggers, then pretty much climb in and start swimming.  He was a vigorous and violently bad swimmer - lots of waves and splashing - and the crones objected.  I watched them argue for a while with the kid before he got out and sat at the end of the pool until another lane opened up, smiling and shaking his head.

A little later one of the ladies joined me in the hot tub, someone I had words with a few weeks back regarding what I considered her selfish behavior.  She didn't change her behavior - imagine that, someone not taking my advice as to how the world should run.  Ironically she took some time to relate a driving story where someone was not very accommodating to what she was trying to do. 

"Some people are just rude," she said.

Yes, well, there is that.  There is the tendency of all of us to find most displeasing in others the behavior that we often exhibit.

Herb Spencer - Philosopher

Practice:  Repetition of an activity to improve a skill.

I think it's interesting that people who like to read also like music.  There was absolutely no music in the house when I was a child but my mother read to me every night.

I think that the best way to approach life is to get in there and mix it up.  I know that when I was drinking I never wanted to try anything new.  I was so afraid that I was not going to do something well that I didn't do very many things.  Not the case today, I'll tell you that.

We discussed prayer and meditation in the morning meeting today.  I think the consensus was that the only incorrect technique is to practice no technique at all.  You think you suck at prayer and meditation?  Well, no shit - we all suck at it.  It's hard as hell.  Even when I sit down and have an atrocious session I think that I do myself a lot of good.

I think this is a good concept: 

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which can not fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation."     --HERBERT SPENCER 

A Useless Discussion

Waste:  Excess of material, useless by-products or damaged, unsaleable products; garbage; rubbish.

Perhaps my bowels are an apt metaphor for my life.  I'd like them to work regularly and in a consistent, predictable fashion, never give me any problems, and produce a result that is neither too hard or too soft.  Odorless would be lovely but I know I'm being greedy there.  I would like to be, in fact, The Director of my bowels.

I'd certainly suggest that god install an on-off switch to operate the things, although technically it's really a single thing, making the phrase redundant and somewhat confusing - incorrect, actually.  Anyway, when it's convenient for me I could simply push the button or flip the switch or toggle the lever or maybe even pull an old-fashioned rope.  Voila! A bowel movement!

I've never grasped the concept of waste.  If I was a god or gods putting together the human animal I'd just tweak the design so that it was so hyper-efficient that no waste was produced. Voila! No bothersome colonoscopy, no laxatives wreaking havoc on my touchy insides.  I wouldn't have had to take like two years worth of Miralax (copyright protected) in a six hour period, leading of course to explosive diarrhea leading to post-colonoscopy constipation, requiring more laxative to get the whole system moving again, restarting the diarrhea process . . . well . . . you get the point and you probably wish that you didn't.

I feel like a mad scientist creating the Frankenstein monster - a Seaweed-enstein - or a TNT manufacturer fooling with the formula - too little explosive and I don't blow anything up and too much explosive and I blow everything up.

Captain Beyond: Dancing madly backward, Dancing on a sea of air.

Cool Seaweed

Cool: Part of or fitting the IN crowd; originally hipster slang. 

Bob H's memorial made me remember a seminal incident in my early sobriety.  I'm sure I've shared this before which shows how big an effect it had on me.  I doubt the actual veracity of the details of the episode as I have a tendency - as we all do - to rearrange what actually happened with what fits the narrative I'm trying to weave.  In general terms, then, trying to be as truthful as possible, this is my recollection. . . .

I was living in Indianapolis and struck up an acquaintance with a man named Bob Smith, and I shit you not on that name.  Bob was a bit of a rough character, an uneducated, lower-class, manual laborer of some kind.  In other words, not someone a cool guy like me would hang out with.  Luckily, I do have some pictures of myself in my early sobriety and "cool" is not the word most people would use.

Be that as it may, Bob used to pick me up and take me to meetings in this big, rumbling Oldsmobile, one of those cars that would hold three golf bags and the bodies of two snitches in the trunk with no problem.  I recall sitting outside my rat-hole apartment in that car and just talking, big V-8 rumbling away.  I'm sure I spent a lot of time emphasizing my coolness with Bob.

I move to Chicago after a few months of sobriety.  On my first trip back to Indy I swung by Bob's little house.  His wife invites me in and, as I stand in the entryway, Bob shuffles into the room.  I hardly recognized him.  Apparently, on all of those nights when I was whining about how bad I had it, Bob was trying unsuccessfully to fight off lung cancer.  He wasn't well enough for a long visit so I didn't stay long and I never saw him again.

But, boy, did that selflessness stick with me, that ability to put his ego aside to help someone else.

Bowels on Fire

OK, the verdict is in and it wasn't close: the post-colonoscopy buzz is definitely not worth the pre-colonoscopy bazinga.  I opt for mild anxiety over bowels on fire.

It made me ponder how readily alcoholics will justify pain to get to some pleasure.  Taken objectively the amount of damage we did to ourselves so that we could get this pleasure - or at least chase the illusion of the pleasure - made absolutely no sense.  Yet, there we went again.  I always thought I was like a guy who, to take the chill off a cool day, would soak himself in gasoline and then light a match.  All I could remember was that instant of gratifying warmth. There was a strange blank spot when it came to the whole being-burnt-to-a-crisp aspect.

I do have a nice, clean colon tonight.  Ever seen a picture of the inside of your colon?  I'm constantly amazed at the beauty of the human organism.  

RIP, Bob H

I got a call from Jim - one of my two original sponsors - a couple of days ago telling me that the other half of the tag team died this week.  Bob was probably in his mid-eighties and had a good forty years of sobriety.  Jim was closer to me in sobriety and spent some time  with me socially - taking me to different meetings, having me over for dinner, dragging me to the occasional dance.  Bob was all business - nice but official.  I get that today - he had undoubtedly seen a lot of guys like me come and go.  He wasn't interested in making a friend - he was serving as a sponsor.  I remember a lot of short, brisk phone calls where he did the talking and I did the listening.  He also wasn't interested in hearing me go over and over my unremarkable and totally deserved problems in excruciating detail.  He was in Solution mode right from the git go.

SuperK gave me a hug and told me that I'd had a lot of loss over the last year.  I shrugged this off, reminding her that Bob and I had been out of touch for a long time.

She said: "Your letter is spot on.  Do you think I didn't know who died when you said Bob's name?  You talk about him all of the time."

Anyway, I sent a letter along.  I hope it is some comfort to the family.  It did me a lot of good writing it.

Mr. Bob H

Sponsor

Big Meeting In The Sky

Stevie Seaweed

AKA, “Half-Measures Seaweed"

Dear Bob:

Thanks for being there to listen to me – a little – when I was getting started in The Fellowship. More importantly, thanks for not listening to me too much because, as you know, I didn't have too much to share in the Solution department, preferring to dwell in the Problem department instead. I understand today why this wasn't particularly interesting, a fact that eluded me at the time.

Although we didn't speak but a few times in the course of the last 28 ½ years be assured that you were frequently on my mind. If half the stuff I attributed to you was actually true you would either be up for sainthood or in jail somewhere. Maybe a little of both. You know the stories we tell: “When I was getting sober my sponsor made me go to seven meetings a day and I had to make coffee for all of them and I had to clean out the pots with a toothbrush and I wasn't allowed to talk for the first ten years and etc etc etc."  I do try to be honest but everyone loves a good sponsor story, right?

Mostly what I remember is your patience and good humor and straightforward advice. I was a pain in the . . . well, you know . . . and surely tried your patience from time to time.

I look forward to seeing you on the other side. And I promise I won't talk. Really.

With much love,

Little Stevie Seaweed

Flexible Inspection Equipment

Every now and then the odd, random thought drifts through my mind that maybe I'm not really an alcoholic.  I don't mean that I really question that incontrovertible fact but it has been a long time since I've had a drink and the ever-patient, always-scheming, never-resting alcoholic mind does play funny tricks on me.

Then there's this: I'm scheduled for a colonoscopy day after tomorrow.  It's a thing people are supposed to do when they get old.  It's not a thing to look forward to, however.  Trust me on this one.  The prior day is a mix of not eating anything plus the ingestion of thirty-five - that's right, Three Five - individual doses of an over-the-counter laxative.  And these are the two best parts of having your colon inspected with a flexible tube.  

I had this procedure done ten years ago.  Mercifully, a sedative is administered intravenously so the patient gets to nod off during the actual inspection.  But the thing I remember most vividly about that day is hanging out at a coffee shop afterwards as the effects of the Demerol wore off.  I was a depressant kind of drug abuser.  I had no interest in things that cranked me up - I am definitely up already, way up - preferring instead stuff that took the edge off my frenetic anxiety.  I remember thinking that afternoon: "Man, if I could just get up in the morning and shoot a tiny bit of Demerol, just the right dose, and then go about my day that would be all-right."

Intellectually, I was fine.  I was with a guy from The Program and I was never close to prowling the mean streets for Demerol, heroin, or any other opioid.  But that weird little voice way down inside spoke up that day.  I hadn't heard from him in a long time and I haven't heard from him in a while now.

Guy across the street had the procedure done not long ago and all he did was complain about how out of it he was all day.  "All I did was doze off," he said.

Definitely not one of us.

Shut-Up, Seaweed

Intolerant:  Unable or indisposed to tolerate, endure, or bear.

Sometimes I think that anyone who thinks that a period of long sobriety requires them to talk at meetings should think otherwise.  Maybe it's some particular people with a lot of sobriety who seem to talk at every goddam meeting I go to that should think about me and how they're irritating me instead of thinking about themselves and talking when I don't want them to talk.

Yes, I know that I'm not very tolerant.  Or maybe I'm just intolerant.  Whichever is worse, that's the one I am.

I don't think that we should have the inmates running the show, either.  I think that old-timers are a good steadying hand at most meetings unless they talk too much.  And for too long.  And at every meeting.  Why would anyone sit down in a crowded room, a place where even if everybody who spoke only consumed a minute of time we'd still not hear from half the people there, and then talk for seven minutes and twelve seconds?

Sometime let me tell you about the nifty stopwatch I have on my watch.  If I'm going to get all up in your face and justified I'm going to have some facts to back me up.  All I'm saying is that I didn't pull that seven minutes and twelve seconds figure out of my ass.

Maybe I should listen to what the person is saying instead of staring at my stopwatch tick off the interminable minutes?

At the end of my beloved meditation meeting a couple of new folks talked.  Such great stuff.  The trouble I have with some sobriety under my belt is that I get in my head too much.  I'll be talking and listening to myself talk and think: "What am I, some kind of Program lecture guy? I can't find my ass with both of my hands."  I need to be cuffed around the head and neck when I do this.  I find I really connect with people who manage to combine the principle with a real-life living problem.  I mean I've heard a lot of great spiritual teaching, recovery principles, in all kinds of places but it was only in The Rooms - when delivered by other people who were clearly as crazy as me but still managing to maneuver the Big, Bad World that was totally eating me alive - that it made sense to me.

I heard one woman talk about watching a harried clerk take a lot of shit from a bunch of impatient customers, and then paying her a compliment.  I heard another talk about the stress of making a big presentation at work in front of powerful, important people but walking through the fear and making the presentation, anyway.  I heard yet another talk about entering a swimming contest where the idea was to swim as far as you could in an hour.  It reminded me of standing in a pool at 50 years old getting ready to take a swimming lesson from a 30 year old who came up to my sternum.  It was embarrassing to struggle to swim half a length of the pool before taking a snootful and having to come up for air.  People look at our pictures from Cambodia and ask:"Were you nervous?"  Uh, yeah.  Not as nervous as my first trip to a wild locale where I felt like throwing up as I boarded the plane but still pretty damn nervous.

Hey, old-timers, maybe shut up for a while.

Thank You For Being So Patient

All of this talk about getting caught doing something wrong and running my mouth before my brain has been engaged and imagining the worst in everything reminds me of a story I heard early in my sobriety.

A woman with some clean time ordered cosmetics over the phone.  The package came nicely - the contents, alas, were incorrect.  She contacted the offending company and was given a hale and hearty apology with a promise to ship out the right stuff.  A few days later a package arrives and my friend was outraged beyond belief to find that the contents were still, alas, incorrect.  She calls the company back and isn't so nice this time.  She lights into the customer service rep with the full fury of someone who has had to make due with a decided lack of proper cosmetics.  Eventually, her ire is expended and she pauses to catch her breath.

"Ma'am," the rep says.  "Your corrected order is on the way - the package you just received was a Thank You For Being So Patient gift from the company."

Yes.  Keeping the mouth shut is always a good policy.

The Mulch Caper Resolved

Thief: One who carries out a theft, the stealing of property.

I'd like your permission to follow-up on The Great Mulch Caper of 2015.  To beg  your indulgence, so to speak.

To recap:
Tree falls in my neighborhood.
Stump is ground up.
Huge pile of mulch appears and sits untouched, for eons untold or a week, whichever came first.
Vaguely disquiet in my mind, I haul off some mulch for personal use, following one of my most beloved credos: "I'd rather beg for forgiveness than ask for permission."
Two neighbors, appearing vaguely disquiet in their minds, come to my door and wonder why I was stealing their mulch?
Invoice is proffered, showing $320 worth of mulch purchases.
Neighbors, much becalmed at my non-violent reaction, vaguely state they'll come back after they use the amount of mulch they need and ask me to pay for the rest.

OK.  I, of course, am pissed off that these guys come over and confront me about my theft of their mulch because it was, frankly, embarrassing to me and is therefore their fault.  So I ruin -or degrade, at least - my piece of mind for four or five days running through this progression:
1. I should have asked for tangible proof that I was the thief such as a security camera tape - aimed for some reason at a pile of mulch - and, lacking such proof, denied any involvement at all in the caper and if they didn't like it they could call the cops.  Tone: vaguely threatening.
2. Offer to pay $20, insisting there was no way I took more than that.  Tone: sullen.
3. Up offer to $50, vaguely aware this was a more realistic number.  Tone: annoyed but increasingly resigned.
4. Re-up offer to $100, but that's it, really.  Tone: calmly resigned.
5. Agree to a 50% reimbursement while calming stating that the amount was fucking ridiculous and I wasn't happy about it.  Tone?: Re-outraged.

The two guys disappear.  Never see them again.  I know where one of them lives and had actually tried to catch him outside to see about paying for my mulch theft.  I did, of course, steal the mulch.  I wasn't unhappy with them any longer for pointing this theft out to me.  I had come around, so to speak, and wanted to right my wrong.

A knock on my door yesterday and I usher one of the two guys into my house.  He says something along the lines of we had enough mulch, it all worked out, I just wanted to let you know what happened to us, the other guy was really sick, just following up, if you'd like to make a donation that would be great but, really, don't worry about it.

"What would be appropriate?" I ask.
"Really, anything you'd like to give," he said.
"How about $30 or $40," I asked, hoping for the former, smaller number.  I think I may have gotten a piece of phlegm caught in my throat when I tried to say "40."
"Oh, that would be too much," he said.

I went and got my wallet.  I knew there were some twenties in there but wasn't sure about a ten.  Dammit!  A ten shows up.  I give the guy $30.  

Price of stolen mulch? $30.
Peace of mind? Priceless.

You Lookin' At Me?

No one is thinking about me.

I thought about posting that as a blog entry.  Really, is there a greater truth in my life than that?  Most of my interpersonal difficulties could be quickly solved by remembering that NO ONE IS THINKING ABOUT ME!

Spandex called a few days ago to relate a story - somewhat interesting but not fascinating - about an interaction with a colleague who he thought disrespected him.  To lessen the sting of the dis, to take the air out of the vexing, he sent his friend a humorous little note to which this individual replied - and I'm playing loose and fast with the facts here, in essence, making this up - "Fuck you talking about?" implying total unfamiliarity with the entire episode.  Spandex laughed heartily, the right response to the response - a re-response, so to speak.

A Despicable, Disagreeable Person

Bitch: (vulgar, offensive) A despicable or disagreeable, aggressive person, often female. 

SuperK needed a haircut.  She tried to call a woman from The Program I'll call "Diane" because that's her name - the woman she tried to call, not SuperK whose name is "SuperK," after all.  The area code was different than ours but in this day and age of cell phones that isn't too unusual.  SuperK still has an area code from The New City - I got mine changed to one that's Vacation City appropriate but only because I got a new phone.  Otherwise, they charge you $50 to get a new number which is about $50 more than I'm willing to spend.

The woman called back.  She took the time to launch into a brief polemic explaining that she wasn't a hairdresser - that must be a different Diane - and to "please not call this number anymore."  She then concluded the phone call.

SuperK laughed a bit about the episode.  But she also said: "What if I had been new to The Program?"  This was a good point.  Another good point is this: Why put your phone number on a phone list if you don't want someone to call back.  Really, that's a very good point.  Mostly, though, is why take the time to call back if you're just going to act like a bitch?  That's the best point - it's not like SuperK called over and over.  Why not simply delete the call?  Maybe this woman likes acting like a jerk.

It make me think about the times when I'm the face of The Program for someone.