M.C. Hammer Pants, A Hair Removing Car Buffer & Being a Supercalifragilistic Observer

My last blog entrywas about humping a black sheep named ‘Buffy’ while wearing a tool belt.  Today I’ve been getting recommendations that I clear up any confusion by

• double checking to see if I was clear enough that ‘Buffy’ is fake

and

• taking time to let my readers know the tool belt I was wearing wasn’t some kind of strap on device

But I just can’t do that.  Seriously.  I had so much fun writing all of that down that I just don’t care if it sounds like I was running up and down a residential street while wearing a ‘device’ and stopping only to sodomize some poor black sheep named ‘Buffy’ who is, for some reason, running up and down the same residential street.

Several years ago a friend and I attended a recovery meeting together where we ran into a old friend who had not been seen for months due to taking another trip around the block to discover if he’d magically become a ‘chemical engineer’.

Our old friend had the typical ‘haven’t been to a meeting in months’ look:

• Same clothing we’d seen him in months prior but
• having lost so much weight caused his pants to look as if he was
• doing a very bad M.C. Hammer pants imitation.
• Missing tooth.
• All new hair-do which
• very unfortunately for him meant
• a mullet

After the meeting we took our old friend to coffee in an attempt to…well…er…um…there’s this really long list of what people in recovery are supposed to attempt to do during coffee after a meeting with someone who is in rough shape.

Such as:

• Remind them of recovery basics
• Help them remember they are not alone
• Listen
• Provide emotional support

That kind of stuff.

But out of that entire list the only thing I managed to do was listen.

I’ve always been a pretty good listener when it comes to addicts who are down on their luck because I was in my early 20’s when I got clean and didn’t have time to pull some of the whacked out crap those older than me did.

Call me a…

• Voyeur
• Peeping Tom
• Supercalifragilistic Observer

Whatever you want to call me, I fully admit always hoping those who were older than me when they got clean will take time to tell me their interesting stories of active addiction in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and beyond.

Yes.  It’s all sad. 

And yes…

our thirty-something friend with his M.C. Hammer pants and bad mullet hair told us the following story:

• He was loaded and
• woke up in his own bed due to
• pain
• and realized it was because some chick had
• stripped him down naked and
• was using a car buffer to try to
• get all of the hair off of one of his
• thighs
• but
• had only managed to buff away until
• his skin was raw and it
• brought him out of a nasty loaded stupor

And, even though I was supposed to be 

Reminding him of recovery basics

Helping him remember he was not alone

Listening

Providing emotional support

I hunched over the table at the coffee shoppe and laughed so hard that I was in pain for something like three days afterward.

So did he.

Right after he cried a little bit because he thought I was making fun of him.

Which I was.

And I’ve always been glad I just laughed because it got him to laugh as well.

And also because not laughing after hearing that story would have been one of the biggest lies I’ve ever told.

There have been so many times I’ve laughed at my recovery friends just after being told some story that has the teller of it looking

• amazed
• shocked
• stunned
• fragile and
• embarrassed

by the words tumbling out of their mouths.

I learned that from being distracted by the hysterical laughter of two people I knew early in my recovery who had gone off in a corner of the room where we were having a

‘Serious Business Meeting’

and reading through one of their own 4th Steps.

I walked over and said,

What’s goin’ on?

One of them said,

We’re reading his 4th Step.

I said,

Why’s it so funny?

The other one said,

Because when I was writing this some of this shit seemed like the worst things in the world and now I’m sitting here thinking about how fucked up I was when I did those things and how even more fucked up I was when I was writing it down and acting as if I was the worst person in the world.

I said,

Sounds to me like you aren’t taking recovery too seriously.

One of them said,

OK newcomer.  What step are you on?

I said,

One.

They started laughing again and I walked away as I heard one of them say,

She’s only been clean for about 4 months.  Everything is serious.

And now I’m sitting here wondering when it is that I decided a bunch of stuff about me and my life and everyone else’s life is actually quite hysterical.

I’m also thinking that I don’t really care because it sure does make a difference to my stress level no matter when it happened.

Especially the fact I think laughing at myself has put a stop to things that seemed like they were always happening in my life such as:

• Getting out of my car at stop lights to ‘teach somebody a lesson’
• Floating checks
• Dancing on tables that are not located in my own home
• Calling my purse my ‘grocery cart’ because I’ve packed so many things out of the Shop-n-Save in there
• Thinking I would look good in a mullet and ending up looking like a terrible imitation of Michael Jackson when he was 14

So, no…I don’t think I will make anything clear about the fact that ‘Buffy’ is a fake sheep or that my tool belt on the night I was humping her wasn’t some sort of device. 

I think I will just love that memory as it is just like I will always get a kick out of my friend who was getting his ’scratches buffed out’ last time he relapsed.