Day: 26 August 2011

Ok, Cut The Comedy*

Tchad

After this past Spring I decided that I was going to have the Summer off.
But like a late night infommercial: THAT ISN’T ALL! THERE’S MORE!

See, I have had a full-time job since 14 legally and a little before that in reality.  I have (had at this point) never had a Summer off.  Never. Add to that that my best friend died and you get a really good recipe for needing to forgo responsibility for a while.

So this was going to be not only my Summer vacation, but I was going to spend most of it in a bottle.  Yes, that’s right. I am an adult and have no work for three months, so… A Summer of near-constant drinking regardless of the time of day seemed like a GREAT idea. I had never done that.  I had always been too busy and had too many responsibilities.

So I tried.  Believe me, I tried.  My friend Carrie called it a “forgotten Summer” when I told her what I planned to do.  The thing is (and this is why I don’t drink in my regular life as a rule) I have such a high tolerance that I have never blacked out or forgotten anything because of booze.  I may may terrible decisions, I may overreact to things, the hangovers may be unbelievable, but I remember every second of it.

So I have been walking around with beer in styrofoam cups  (don’t worry, I don’t drive) drinking publicly for three months, feeling like I have been getting away with something and then drinking Cabernet or Burgundy from 4 p.m on and settling in with a nice Port before bed.

And now it needs to come to an end.  Luckily I am actually looking forward to it.  But it can’t go on.

After all, We aren’t in Wisconsin, dear.

*My mother’s catchphrase when we were supposed to go to bed and wanted to stay up and play and act like idiots.

Indulgent Redemption

Tchad

I am going to try to be blunt but not offensive here. It will be hard for me, but in the interests of not seeming too ignorant, I have a nascent thought about what I have always privately called “indulged redemption”.

I was reading Metafilter today and came across this post.

In my mind, indulgent redemption is when one squanders a good deal of time and energy in things that don’t matter and then (TA-DA) finds their redemption in something outside of themselves.  Usually it involves lots of judgment and sometimes it even gives birth to screeds or political movements.  In my mind, it is almost always a negative thing.

I started thinking about it when I was a kid.  My dad, when he first met my mother in the early 1970s, was a fraternity party-boy.  My mother grew up with alcoholics and so wasn’t thrilled with being around it.

So in order to court her, he made a HUGE deal of not drinking anymore.  He was from a teetotaling family anyway, so it was fairly easy for him to do it.  So I grew up with one side of the family raging alcoholics and the other side prim teetotaling Methodists.  It was interesting, to say the least.

And that was my first introduction to indulgent redemption.  It comes close to martyrdom, but not quite.  It is more like wearing a judge’s gavel around your neck 24/7 because you deserve it.

This is just the beginning of an idea… Maybe I’ll get more into it later.