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I’ve been traveling a lot recently, so it’s been hard on my wife and kids to manage life at home when I’m not around. So I try to be thoughtful on trips and bring back small gifts for everybody.
Well… I had a dumpster fire moment last week. On a trip to Charlotte, I was delighted to see an American Girl store across the street. I walked over to buy my youngest daughter something, and struck up a nice conversation about potential purchases with a young woman employee.
She steered me into the best spot to find something in the $25 range. I eventually picked the perfect item and walked down an aisle toward her. She was standing 10 feet away, in front of the register, and I wanted to say thanks for the heads up…
Then I realized that my fly was down. Actually, it wasn’t just my fly: My pants weren’t buttoned at all.
So yeah, it totally looked like I was stripping in the store. I noticed, she noticed (she looked horrified) and I made an awkward noise and then ducked down another aisle. There, I crouched down a bit and, you know, actually put my pants completely on for the day.
I was mortified. I exchanged some awkward followup conversation with the woman but what do you say after THAT? We both just wanted to get on with our lives and I got the hell out of there as soon as I could.
But here’s the thing that relates to recovery. I have learned to process many emotions that used to trip me up—sadness, anger, fear, and so on. But I suck at dealing with the feeling of being embarrassed. I have always struggled mightily with those moments where I feel owned.
It might seem a little silly, but when I did my first Fourth Step and laid out my biggest resentments and where they were coming from, I found a lot of them revolved around feeling humiliated. I just have never been able to digest that feeling very well, and as I found on that Fourth Step, it was a roadmap toward drinking, drugging and numbing myself out when I was an active addict.
Now I’m sober, and I gotta confess, it’s not that much easier. I think I’m able to laugh off things now, I can take some ribbing and my skin is quite a bit thicker. But those really embarrassing moments… they’re still hard for me.
So when I left the store, I spent the next few hours going through a litany of thoughts about how to make the situation better. As so often happens when I am inside my own head, the thoughts got dumber and dumber. At first, it was like, Should I go back to the store and explain? Should I call over there and apologize?
Then it got progressively more and more crazy. Maybe I ought to write a letter to the manager? SHOULD I HAVE FRIENDS AND FAMILY WRITE LETTERS OF SUPPORT SO EVERYBODY KNOWS I’M NOT A HUGE CREEP WHO TAKES HIS PANTS OFF AT AMERICAN GIRL STORES?!?!
I eventually got out of my own brain and called a sober friend and said that I was in a bit of a tailspin. He said I was probably blowing things out of proportion and I told him the story. “She probably thinks I am a huge creep,” I said at the end.
“Well… that is pretty creepy, I gotta say,” he said, and we both started laughing. He ultimately said he gets it but that the best plan of action is to probably say a little prayer, move on and get the hell out of Charlotte.
So that’s what I did. And, as so often happens in recovery, we learn from our mistakes. I’ve kept my pants on the right way for almost a week straight since then!
ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE DAY
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke.
When a woman called the local police station to report that she had found a drunk in her cellar, the police sergeant advised, “Make a trail of drinks from the basement to the yard and wait for the drunk to follow them outside.”
A little while later the woman called back: “I did what you told me. Now I’ve got two drunks in my cellar.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, April 2000, Shirlene H. from Bountiful, Utah)
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