My friend, Buddha, celebrated his 19th anniversary the other day at our home group. There is a formula we follow when speaking on our anniversaries : What it was like, how I got here, and what it is like now. We call this “telling my story”.
Buddha condensed his story a bit and ended up with spare time before the meeting ended, so he started relating incidents from his past. When you consider that Buddha is well into his 70’s and he’s been sober less than 20 years, he has a mother lode of drinking stories to tell.
With Christmas approaching he was reminded of this one. From here on in, it's Buddha speaking.
This is back when I was in Chicago and I was driving a beer truck. Christmas was going to be the next Monday and I didn’t have a tree for my apartment. I went past one of those vacant lots where they sell Christmas trees so I stopped and got a little one I could put on my kitchen table.
Actually, I didn’t have a real apartment, I had what I guess you’d call a studio. Or maybe a furnished room with a stove and sink in one corner for a kitchen. Anyway, I bought this little tree and I also bought a box of Christmas tree lights and a box of ornaments to hang on the tree.
I was in my own neighborhood so I dropped off the tree and the other stuff at my place. Well, this was Friday and I got paid on Friday. You can guess what happened.
I always was a binge drinker and Christmas was the best time of the year for binge drinking. I went out that night after work and I don’t know what happened until I found myself back in my apartment.
This was sometime on Christmas Day. I was flat broke and the tree was still on the table, along with the lights and decorations. I had never trimmed it.
Now, the next day I had to go back to work. There was a woman who worked in the office of the beer company and she lived close to me. She would stop by my place every morning and I would give her a ride to work. And that’s what happened this morning, the morning after Christmas.
Well, we got to work. She went into the office and I went out to the loading dock.
Once I got my beer truck loaded I had to go into the office for my paperwork. I could hear her talking, and she was talking about me, about me and my Christmas tree.
She was telling them about how neat I was, that I already had my tree taken down, and all the lights and decorations back in their boxes. She said,
And he even wrapped the electric wires around each light bulb before he put them back in the box !
As usual, names and places have been changed to protect the anonymity of those involved.