It's Not MY Fault

I'm a defensive son of a bitch.  I play a mean defense while subscribing to the maxim that the best defense is a BIG offense.  Whenever I behave badly I have a tendency to cycle through a tried and true - albeit old and tired - process of justification.  The Big Book lays this out better than I ever could when they describe how we respond to the charge that our drinking is a problem.  We say I'm only hurting myself so leave me alone.  We say we're taking care of our obligations so we have a right to "have fun" in our down time.  We say we're drinking because of the behavior of other people.  We're not instigating - we're reacting.  Never admit a fault and when the fault is so apparent that it's embarrassing to pretend it's not then point the finger elsewhere.    

I will never forget the story of the Speeding Driver.  I've told this story so many times over the years and changed the circumstances so often to indulge whatever whims and flights of fancy are driving my actions that day that I no longer remember if it happened to me and someone passed these thoughts my way or if it happened to someone else and I spoke from high atop my lofty moral soapbox or whether I just made the whole thing up.  Anyway, someone gets a speeding ticket after blowing by an obvious speed trap, going 75 MPH in a 55 MPH zone.  Everyone around the driver is speeding, too, so it may be that the radar picked up an adjacent car.  Unlikely, but possible.  The driver has been on this road hundreds of times, always speeding, but never getting a speeding ticket.  Doesn't really make it okay to speed but does show the mindset: "I get away with this all the time so I'll get away with it again."  The aggrieved driver calls his sponsor who asks: "What was the speed limit?" and then, armed with this information, following up with: "How fast were you going?"  The final segment of this devastating trilogy was silence.

My initial reaction is usually to fight the charges.  If I can keep my trap shut long enough to avoid feeding my balls through the wringer I get to the point where I apologize and strive to do better.  That's my part.  That's all I should do.  Everything else is self-justifying bullshit.