Bending Reality

I was walking around today, mumbling to myself, thinking about my absolute favorite topic: Me, Horseface Steve. It's hard to put into words the love affair that I have with myself. I overlook all of my defects -- no mean feat given their sheer volume and intensity -- and I exaggerate the extent of the few good attributes that I have managed to hang onto. I call this Bending Reality. I was the kid using a ball peen hammer to jam the little square peg through the little round hole. It looked like it would fit to me.

What good attributes, some might ask? Well, I have very good personal hygiene as long as we're not including the teeth or gums, I'm nice to animals if they're nice to me, and I always return my shopping cart to the cart corral at the grocery store. I'm sympathetic to the fact that the store can not be held liable for any damages caused by their carts. I am interested in helping them keep their costs down.


Actually, I started thinking about how much I think about myself while I was on the phone with a friend in The Program, trying hard to feign interest in what he was saying, as it was taking my attention away from myself. Suddenly, it dawned on me: this guy is thinking about himself too much! Oh, sure he was dressing it up as some unknowable character defect that was impossible to detect, but it was good old self-absorption.

I pointed out his shortcoming. My second favorite activity after thinking about myself -- Horseface Steve -- is criticizing the behavior of others. He was grateful for my keen insight. He said something along the lines of: "Why don't you go #!#!* yourself you self-righteous piece of #$!!*. Then we went and had a cup of coffee.


The truth hurts.

Expectations, Incorporated

Expect: Implies a considerable degree of confidence that an event will happen.


Normally I expect that whatever is going to happen will be very, very bad. So bad -you don't know how bad. Don't get me started on how bad. This despite the fact that very bad things almost never happen to me and when they do, they're not as bad as I think they're going to be, and even then I've been given the tools to handle whatever comes my way. But I'm sure this time it's going to be different. This time it's going to be bad.


Ironically, the rest of the time I expect that the outcome is going to be very, very good. Implausibly good. Scoring the winning points as time expires to win The Championship of the World good. Super model in a Ferrari good. People are a little wary about planning things with me or giving me anything because my expectations are so blown out of proportion. "You bought me a little gift? Is it a Ferrari? A red Ferrari?"


I'm going to die today in a horrible, painful accident or I'm going to live forever in the penthouse suite at the Shangri La Hotel. I haven't decided which yet. Could be both. I'm not sure how that would work but I bet it'd be cool.

Tomorrow: Expectations

I'm going to quit complaining about the holidays for a while. Not for long, I suspect, because they provide such a great opportunity for self-righteous individuals such as myself to rant incoherently. Really, Santa Claus is a easy target: big, fat guy dressed in red covered in tinkling bells and revealing his location with a booming laugh. What's the sport in flogging Santa Claus? I'm no athlete but I think I can run down that guy, although the magic sleigh may be a problem. That's his ace in the hole, those flying reindeer. I don't have an easy answer to that one.

The religious stuff is a little touchier. People get defensive if you start picking on their gods. I can understand that. Still, it has its attraction for me. It's funny how the original idea behind Christmas -- celebrating the birth of the saviour -- got buried under an avalanche of crass materialism. Those kooky marketing guys sure know what they're doing. Somehow they managed to translate gold, frankincense, and myrrh into Baby Burps-A-Lot. Frankincense and myrrh are shrubs that can be dried to create incense. Why would an infant want incense? I can just see Mary and Joseph muttering about that. "We're freezing to death in this stable and we get myrrh? How about a blanket so we can get rid of these swaddling clothes?"

Sidetracked again.

Holiday -- From "Holy Day"

The holidays can be a little tricky. Expectations are high. This is generally problematic with alcoholics who have made disappointment when high expectations are not met an art form. It's as if we have to be wondrously joyous because the time of the year calls for it. Does this mean we get to act poorly the rest of the year? I don't have the ability to turn my joyiosity on and off like a light. Personally I think it would be a lot easier to behave pretty well most of the time than to be really, really good for a couple of weeks at the end of the year. I don't like being really good. It doesn't come to me naturally.

I attended my wife's holiday party last weekend. It was the worst holiday party that I have ever attended for a whole variety of reasons. Mostly it was the tension between people who don't normally get along all that well but were forced to socialize at an event where being wondrously joyous was required. There was a lot of uncomfortable conversation over the bad beef and creme brulee. The president showed up an hour late and made his "Go get 'em" speech at the end of the dinner, when the drinkers were drunk and half the crowd had left. The manager told me that he was being sued for sexual harassment. He didn't invite the employees he didn't like to the company Christmas party.

At one job I held the owner made his employees exchange names and buy each other a gift. In an ironic twist of fate (remember: God has a great sense of humor) he got my name. "What do you want?" he asked me. "How about you don't act like such a jerk?" I wanted to say. He bought me the kind of shirt that he liked to wear in his favorite color. "Gee, thanks," I said. I'm still polishing the car with it.

I'm not trying to poop all over the holidays. I enjoy them as much as the next person, as long as I don't have to do anything that I don't want to do.

Santa is hip to my bullshit.

Ho! Ho! Ack!

So the holidays are upon us. This time of the year always presents me with a wonderful opportunity to be venomous, self-righteous, and openly critical. And I'm not sure why, either. The holidays are a perfectly fine concept, when they are executed properly, which they usually are not. It seems to me that a lot of people try to jam a whole year's worth of good cheer into a couple of weeks. This is not only impossible, it usually makes everything worse as harried shoppers try to live up to an impossible ideal that exists in some holiday fable written long ago, in a simpler time, by a delusional opium addict.

I try not to buy into this madness. For a while, I raged against the machine. I was vociferously anti-holiday. I behaved like an enraged, psychotic elf. All this did no good. The holidays marched on inexorably. I stopped nothing. Nobody is interested in some horse-faced dude trying to rain on their parade.

The last few years I have tried experimenting with my own personal holiday spirit. This year I reflected on some people who made my life better by just being nice to me. There are a lot of people like that, believe it or not. I know, I know, it's a weird subset of the human race,but there are people out there who are pleasant by nature. When I'm pleasant people wonder what I'm trying to get out of them.

I thought about the coffee shop manager who has my drink ready every morning; the woman at the membership desk of my swim club who took the time to remember my name; the mailman who rings the doorbell when a letter doesn't fit in the box , instead of tossing it on the ground, which is what I would have done. I stuck a few bucks in envelopes and started passing them out. It's not the amount of money which is important. Well, it's a little important. Don't try this with $1 bills and expect a big smile, but don't bankrupt yourself, either.

I was surprised at the reactions. Apparently a lot of people don't do this.

My friend Shorty was quick to point out that if I was truly humble -- which I am not -- I would have done this anonymously. He spends a lot of time pointing out my defects. He is also very generous with my money. He has offered to deliver the envelopes himself, promising to give me the credit.

There will be no envelope under Shorty's Christmas tree this year.

Serenity Stan, We Hardly Knew Ye

I got a note the other day from Serenity Stan relating an incident in his family that placed him squarely between two people who weren't behaving all that well. Not that Stan behaves all that well himself but that's a topic for another discussion. I probably shouldn't be sharing this story without first checking with Serenity Stan (heretofore to be referred to as S.S. or "the plaintiff") but that's the beauty of semi-anonymous blogging. You can behave in a semi-principled manner, which would be a big upgrade from the barely-principled manner that is my normal method of operation. Not that Stan is his real name or that he has any serenity at all or that anyone outside of his very small group of friends cares anything about him, it's just that it's the principle of the thing.

One of the best reasons for talking regularly with people who haven't been sober as long as I have is that I get to pretend that I know what I'm talking about. And I can give advice that isn't very good to people who don't believe what I'm saying and wouldn't do what I suggest even if they did. It makes me feel older and wiser, even though I'm basically older and not that much wiser. Getting old means that you've done almost every stupid thing at least twice and can explain how painful the consequences were to the person who is not listening to you and probably isn't savvy enough to pick up on the moral of the story. Not that he would act on the moral of the story anyway, which is how it should be. We all have earned the right to behave stupidly and learn hard lessons from severe consequences. It's what separates us from the animals, after all. Except for cats who apparently have a propensity for sitting on hot stoves from time to time.

S.S. was a champ, by the way. He wrote down all of the things that he wanted to say to the misbehavers, then burned the note, ate the ashes, and buried his scat in the backyard, thus saving himself a lot of additional pain. We got to console and irritate each other with the phrase: "You're the one with the Program." We got to remind each other that, as sick people ourselves, we do well to remember that there are a lot of other sick people in the world. Alcoholics don't have the market cornered on sick, although we do a good job of merchandising it.

"When a person offended we said to ourselves: 'This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.' "

Conundrum: Any puzzling question or problem.


I used to think that questions such as: "Where the hell is my car?" or "Where the hell is my wallet?" or "Who the hell are you?" were examples of conundrums. I've grown older and wiser. Well, older anyway; wiser is a matter of opinion. Where my stash ended up is not a conundrum. Why I no longer have a front bumper is not a conundrum. These are factual events whose details have been obscured by the fog of alcohol and drugs. Big difference.


I do admit to being confused at times by the matter of personal responsibility. I have a friend in The Program whose sponsor used to answer his phone calls with: "It's not them -- it's you." The Program suggests that if I want to see the person responsible I should look in the mirror. So I figure it's all about me.


Then The Program tells me that if I try to do this alone that my goose is cooked. To drive home the point the First Step begins with the word "We." Then all of the other Steps use the third person plural freely and with no regrets. Everything is we this or us that. So I figure that I'm not supposed to do this by myself.

Hmm.