Angry Guy V Inappropriate Guy

I have a friend in A.A. who has a temper.  It's a guy, naturally, and I'm talking about quite the temper.  Take a swing at you, scream obscenities kind of temper.  Scary temper.  I've watched him make great progress in his recovery, so much so that he now works as an intake counselor at a drug rehab center.  Early in his journey he threatened a coworker at his place of employment and was promptly fired - even though he didn't carry through on his threat his company had a policy of no violence, actual or implied.  Kind of unbelievable that companies have to actually make a policy like that.  It doesn't speak very well of the society we live in.  Anyway, he paid the price, learned from it, and has continued to grow.  For a while - quite a while - I'd usually ask him how he was doing with his anger management.  He reported in but I didn't think he especially appreciated the nudges.  It's almost as if I was saying: "How's it going, you fuck-up?"  But we're close enough that I felt comfortable poking at his sore spots, at his deficiencies and defects, and he was savvy enough to listen.

At the meeting yesterday he came into the kitchen area as the meeting was getting underway where I was waiting for the kettle to boil and provide me with hot water for my tea - cursed secretary made coffee but didn't take care of the tea drinkers, curse her, although does any red-blooded A.A. member really trust anyone who chooses tea over coffee? - and he was boiling mad.  He overheard one of our other members make a couple of jokes that he thought were disrespectful to women.  This guy has also made a ton of progress in his recovery but his jokes are sometimes funny and sometimes they make me wince a little.  Not terribly inappropriate but not what you'd like to see in someone growing spiritually.  Early on this guy talked a lot about money and women, clearly reliving what he thought were past successes in the money and and sex department to someone who could not have cared less.  Anyway Temper Guy got in Inappropriate Guy's face about the comments.  My job, I thought, was just to get Temper Guy to calm down.  Which I did, so hooray for me!  Temper Guy then said: OK.  I need to make amends" which pretty much floored me.

I like to see this kind of progression, this kind of growth.  While I was happy he didn't take a swing at Inappropriate Guy he coulda kept his mouth shut.  Progress is incremental and it can be painfully slow.  Next time maybe he'll throw down a slew of curses mentally while keeping quiet.  The goal, of course, is not to react with anger at all.  Lofty goal, indeed.  The funny thing is that Inappropriate Guy took the amends well and 'fessed up to some maybe, kinda, not-so-great behavior on his part.  So what do I know?  While I do believe that kindness and positive reinforcement work best most of the time sometimes we need to have someone point out clearly bad behavior.  Maybe my gentle tolerance for the off-color stories was interpreted as tacit agreement or acceptance of the behavior.  Maybe some direct commentary, honest, face-to-face, was necessary.

At Costco yesterday I was waiting - with my turn signal on - for traffic to clear so I could enter one of the lanes running between the parking spaces when the guy behind me sounded his horn.  First of all, never go to Costco on Friday, which is apparently their busy day.  Actually, that's it - there's no second of all.  There is a point, however, which I may or may not get to eventually.  Here's the action: SuperK said: "Did that guy just beep at you?" and then we both burst out laughing.  Old Seaweed has grown, too, from someone who would have stood on his horn while flashing the bird to someone who would have left his horn dormant while cursing mightily to someone who laughed merrily.  This was not easily attained behavior.  This took time.