Horseface Steve and Chuck

Take Advantage Of: To make use of for one's own benefit or for a selfish purpose.


Sometimes I need to have other people tell me when I'm behaving well.  I marvel at how hard it is to pay myself a compliment.  I marvel at how easy it is to dwell on the negative when I review my actions at the end of each day and at how easy it is to dismiss my achievements, mostly because my Buick-sized ego thinks achievements should be large and dramatic.  My ego doesn't think much of a simple life well lived.


Recently I decided to buy a new car.  This, of course, falls squarely in the camp of "things I didn't have to worry about when I was drinking."  I fondly remember the car I was driving when I got sober: a 1965 Plymouth Belvedere station wagon that my grandfather gave me.  It ran just fine unless it was too hot or too cold or it was raining or I hadn't started it in the last 3 hours.  It had one headlight and no radio and the heater didn't work too well.  The brakes were shot, and so were the tires.  Maybe "fondly" isn't the right word.  As you can imagine, it was a terrifying experience to get in that thing.


Anyway, I stopped by a car dealer and spoke with one of the salesmen, grateful that I'm in a position to afford a new car.  I used to take the stance of Me Versus Them when I was trying to buy something.  Today I'm relaxed, less paranoid,  and I understand that everyone is trying to make a living.  I don't naturally assume that people are trying to take advantage of me, to cheat me.  I told this guy, who seemed to be a perfectly decent man, that I wasn't going to run all over town to try to get the absolute lowest price imaginable and that what I expected from him was a fair proposal right out of the chute.  I'm lucky to be in a position where I have a little cushion in my finances; I realize that not everyone can do this, and I'm grateful for that.


Now, I went home and did some homework, of course.  I'm not that trusting.  I found that the guy was being more than fair with me.  I'm going to assume that if I did run all over town, being marginally honest and totally manipulative, trying to play every dealer off of each other that I probably could have saved a few more dollars.   My experience is that when I've behaved this way people have been know to  mutter "what a jerk" when I walk out of the place.


The next day I went back in with SuperK to choose the specific model.  Chuck, the salesman, stopped us before we took a test drive and spoke to my wife: "I want to say something here.  I'm going to call this guy out before we go.  He's a man of his word.  He told me what he was going to do yesterday and that's what he did, and I appreciate that."  This was not scripted and I could tell Chuck was being honest.  I was able to say: "Thanks, I appreciate that."  


I assume that a lot of people tell him what they're going to do and then they don't do it.  Some of them probably lie outright and some of them are probably afraid, so they say whatever they want to get themselves out of an uncomfortable situation.  So instead of thinking only of myself I try to think of the other person.  How easy it would be to become jaded and defensive if you had to deal with people like that all day long.


It's a damn nice car.

Beat Around the Bush

I like the fact that my friends in The Program call me on my nonsense.  They speak to me directly.  They don't beat around the bush.  They beat ON the bush, and I'm the bush.  I believe that their motives are usually good although I don't always like to hear what they have to say.  I was offended and shocked at their bluntness early on.  


When I'm not doing well I tend to give answers that gloss over the truth about how I'm really doing and to have the people I'm talking to patronize me with their response.  I don't want to expend the energy to really listen to anyone else and I don't want anyone else to really get to know me.  I have an impressive front to maintain and any honesty about setbacks or problems would sully my surface.


I think my friends want to know how I'm doing.  Really.  I think they really want to hear the truth when they ask me a question.  I don't think they want to hear me bitch on and on about something forever but I also think they don't like it when I try to gloss over my problems.  My favorite response to any inquiries after my well being used to be: "Fine."  Some of us think this is an acronym for Screwed-Up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Evasive.  It can be a good answer if you indeed are feeling fine.  It's dishonest if you aren't.  No one can be helped if they refuse to admit they have a problem.


When things didn't go well my dad would get angry and go out, and my mom would assure me that everything was OK.  So I learned to get mad and run away or to pretend that everything was fine.  My first sponsor told the story of coming inside with a cut knee, crying, when he was a little boy.  His father said: "You're OK" and his mother said: "It doesn't hurt."  Maybe it was the other way around.  The point is that it did hurt and he wasn't OK.  


People are listening when you speak.

Horseface Steve -- Controller

Controller: A person who controls; one who governs, manages, or restrains.


I'm trying to help out my elderly parents as their health begins to worsen.  The problem is that they don't want my help, which is too bad because I always know what is best for everyone.  If my parents took all of my suggestions then their lives would be a wondrous thing to behold.  They don't seem to think so, apparently, because they're taking approximately none of my suggestions.


Personally, I never listen to anyone when they try to give me any advice.  I don't even listen to close and trusted friends who give me advice on matters that I have specifically asked for advice on.  You can imagine how it goes when I don't want the advice, or I don't like the person dispensing the advice.


More lessons in powerlessness.  

Spooky

Here's the minor Buddhist again, trying to convince practical German peasants like me that meditation is worth my time: "Suddenly the solution is there.  It just pops out of the deep mind and you say, 'Ah ha!' and the whole thing is solved."  When I first read the famous Promises of AA lore I marveled at how empty and indistinct they seemed.  Today I marvel at how utterly profound they are.  One of the great Promises suggests that "we will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us."  I was skeptical of this dubious idea at first.  


Some of us think these solutions are god-centered and come from a place not of this world.  Some of us think that the mind is an amazing thing if we can only stop letting the superficial parts run the show, the parts that clamor for more pleasure and less pain, for more money, sex, and power.  Like most people who have worked away at this I have a thick ledger full of situations where I prayed and meditated and made a decision, sometimes on weighty matters, that seemed to run counter to logical reasoning and had the whole thing turn out wonderfully.  The Xs and the Os seemed to suggest something, and the deep circuitry led me to something else.


I don't know what to call this anymore.  Frankly, I don't care.  I don't know why I make the choices I do some of the time but it's nice not always blowing everything up while I try to talk with my foot in my mouth.  I go with the Little Man on my shoulder.  I do what he says.  All I know is that the information is coming from someplace that I don't fully understand.  It trumps my logic; it supplements my conscious mind without replacing it.


Well, I don't meditate because I LIKE meditating.

Appearances

Appearance:  Generally refers to the outward impression of a thing while often implying mere show or pretense.


I do a great job of quickly sizing up someone based solely on their appearance, placing them in a category with strict qualifications, then loving them or despising them accordingly.  This happens fast. The funny thing -- not ha ha funny but sad pathetic funny -- is that I'm almost never right in my judgment.  I put people in a Box.  It's very difficult to get out of my Boxes.  I assume everyone else does it to me so I've developed a lot of mere show and pretense to fake out the competition.  Look left and go right with a head fake thrown in for good measure.


In the Old City I had a guy ask me to be his sponsor.  He looked like a Hell's Angel.  I mean, really: shaved head, goatee, tattoos, Harley cycle, the whole bit.  Really one of the nicest guys I've worked with in The Program: smart, kind, good sense of humor, a real pleasure to know.  Now, I'm not saying he didn't do some damage with a belly full of beer when he was in his day but I never got to see that.  All I know is that he looked like a Hell's Angel but acted like a social worker.

I've learned today to set aside the impressions that I form based on someone's appearance or the type of car they drive or what kind of work they do or where they live and go over and talk to the person.  It's not natural.  This is an acquired taste.  I've found that the people I put in the Cool Box turn out to be not so cool and the people that I don't think are going to be worth my precious, precious, precious time end up being so worth my precious, precious time.  You used to be Better Than Me and I resented you, or you were Worse Than Me, and I scorned your very existence.


This has to be more control.

The Conundrum

Compliment:  Something said in admiration or praise.


The only thing that irritates me more than being criticized is trying to figure out what to do with a compliment.  Compliments make me really, really uncomfortable.  In a surprisingly substantial way I enjoy the criticism more than the praise.  I know what to do with the criticism.  I feel shitty about myself anyhow so I secretly believe that the criticism is justified; in fact, I'm just lucky the criticizer doesn't really know all about me.  They're merely scratching the surface; it would be a blood bath if they knew my deep, dark secrets (Ed note: by "deep, dark secrets" I mean "fairly ordinary things that I've blown way out of proportion).  And when someone says something that isn't complimentary I get to fight back, which I love to do, or I get to run away, which I love to do even more.


I've come to believe that this is not only unfair to myself, it's unfair to the person who is trying to be nice.  Today I think the right answer to a compliment should fall along the lines of: "Thank you.  I appreciate that.  What a nice thing to say."  Today I personally enjoy dispensing compliments; it makes me feel good to say something nice to someone else.  It's fairly disappointing when the other person tries to fight off my kind words with excuses or sarcasm, even though I understand the impulse.  As an Egomaniac with an Inferiority Complex I crave your praise at the same time it's making me uncomfortable.


I can take a blow.  I can't take a pat on the back.

People, Can We All Just Get Along?

Society: Any organized group of people joined together because of some interest in common.


I'm repeating myself here, saying the same things over and over because I can't remember what I did 20 minutes ago let alone last week, but I think often of the time early in my sobriety when I tried to refuse a service position by explaining that I didn't drink coffee at night.  Why would I come to a meeting early to make coffee for other people, especially when I wasn't going to be paid or at least lavishly praised?  Never mind the criticizing about the bad coffee that I endured; I'm glad I didn't know that was coming.  


This was how I perceived the world: as a Zero Sum Game.  There was a certain amount of everything and my goal was to accumulate as large a pile as possible.  I was vaguely aware that this would come at the expense of the piles of other people, but I didn't care about other people at that point.  I certainly wasn't going to take anything off of my pile to give to anyone else.  I had done a lot of work to build that pile.


More from the minor Buddhist: "You've got to see your own place in society and your function as a social being.  You've got to see your duties and obligations to your fellow human beings, and above all, your responsibility to yourself as an individual living with other individuals."


Man, does that sound like The Fellowship.  That's nothing more than a fancy rewording of the First Tradition, which cautions us that the individual is never more important than the organization as a whole.


And I don't want to harp on the Buddhist tradition, either.  The Bible is filled with examples of Jesus serving others.  I can almost hear him muttering under his breath as he washed the feet of the disciples: "Do I have to show these idiots everything?  MY feet are killing me, my bunions need a good massaging, and I could use a new pair of sandals from Columbia."  He knew the showing was better than the telling.


Those damn disciples, anyway.