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My youngest daughter did a cheerleading camp this week, and it was awesome. After her first day, I asked her how it was and she rolled her eyes, exasperated.
“The 6-year-olds are really hard to hold up when we do lifts, and it’s so hard to keep them focused on practicing—they’re very hard to deal with, Dad,” she said.
I started dying laughing. “You’re 6 years old!” I said.
She nodded her head that yes, it’s true, she was indeed talking about people her age. But these OTHER kids were very difficult!
It reminded me of the first time I heard somebody at a meeting say, “You spot it, you got it.”
I immediately misunderstood what that meant. I thought the saying was that if you identify something about yourself, you can handle it. Like: It’s okay, you got this!
But what it really meant—in the context it was said to me, anyway—is that when I am pointing an aggravated finger at things, there’s a decent chance that it’s bothering me for a very specific reason: That the behavior in front of my face is serving as a mirror.
I only discovered my poor comprehension of that slogan when I was railing against a work colleague for being a loudmouth know-it-all and I noticed the sober friend across from me was experiencing a case of raised-eyebrow-itis. I finally stopped, mid-rant, and said, “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He didn’t even open his mouth to answer. It hit me that he was goofing on me with his bulging eyeballs because I might occasionally be a know-it-all loudmouth myself. I initially was thinking, “Nooooooooooo. No way. Me?” But the more I sat with it, the more I realized that it was true, that many of the behaviors that frustrate me the most in life are often times when a mirror is held up in front of my face and I see the worst parts of me on display.
And the truth is, yeah, I have just enough knowledge and wit and opinions to have something to say about almost everything. My best moments in sobriety are usually my quietest—I’m not jamming my thoughts down your throat. My worst moments often involve me needing to just shut up. It’s basically my version of being 6 years old and getting aggravated by other 6-year-olds.
Speaking of which… my little one also recently picked up the phrase, “Whoever smelt it, dealt it.” She uses it all the time, for nonsensical reasons. I asked her to clean up her plate and drink cup from the living room the other day and she shook her head to indicate no. “Hey, you smelt it, you dealt it.”
I was miffed for a minute about the mis-use of that phrase but I eventually shrugged my shoulders and took the plate and cup out of the living room myself. These 6-year-olds can be very hard to deal with…
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.
HEARD AT MEETINGS: “Drinking saved my marriage. We were always too drunk to finish the divorce paperwork.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, May 2003, Anonymous from New York, New York)
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