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Source: Mary T. (Pearl) – Traditions in Healthy Relationships – Part 1 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: mary-t-pearl-traditions-in-healthy-relationships-part-1-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:19:46
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Somebody remember that's where I put the keys. I don't like keeping keys. My name is Jan. I am with both Al-Anon and AA. I started in AA first in 1990. And through a wonderful sponsor and things, I healed. And then a few years ago, my other members of the family started acting like I used to. Thank you. I hate those things. So I joined Al-Anon so I could let them go on their journey until they got to wherever they could get.
And hopefully they'll get here in one side or the other. Mary Pearl was the first person I thought of when I decided to do this thing. And the reason was in my first year of sobriety, I heard her speak over at Lafayette. And she talked to my heart. And I've loved her ever since. She doesn't know that, but I listen to her tapes all the time. What I want to do is welcome each and every one of you. Because it's through your participation that this thing has become a success.
And I think it's awesome. I never dreamed it would come out to be this great. There's a few changes in the program. Because we're all human. And I'm probably the glitch. But breakfast is not at 8.30. Breakfast is at 8 o'clock. And Mary Pearl just informed me that she does not speak from 9.30 to 11.30. She speaks from 10 to 12. Because she's got to have a little before she gets going. So tomorrow you'll have a little time after breakfast.
And then at 10 o'clock we'll meet back in here for the second session of her speech. Or workshop. I'm not good at this, folks. I'm better out there. I'm going to ask Dorothy to come up and do the serenity prayer. And then right behind that will be Tish, not Trish. And she's going to do the preamble or something. I forgot one. I'm going to leave the program up here so you people know. Maybe if I do this again someday I'll be better at it.
But, Dorothy, wherever you are. Hi, everybody. I'm Dorothy. And this thing is awesome. And I'm a grateful member of Alcoholics Anonymous. My sobriety date is July 26, 1989. And I wanted to say before I say the serenity prayer that you are in for a treat tonight. I listened to Mary Pearl's tapes. And I also heard her at Crested Butte. And I understand that's one of her favorite places to go. Anyway, she was awesome.
Serenity prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And this goes on a little bit. And I don't know if you know the rest of it. But if you'd like to repeat it line after line after me, feel free to do so. Living one day at a time. Enjoying one moment at a time. Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.
Taking as he did the sinful world. As it is, not as I would have it. Trusting he will make all things right if I surrender to his will. That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with him forever in the next. Amen. Y'all did good on that. Thank you. Hi. I'm Tish El, for some of you, and Letty for some of you. And I'm a grateful member of Al-Anon. I have 14 years of sitting in these chairs and about four days of recovery.
Fortunately, today is one of them. So I'm going to read the Al-Anon preamble. The Al-Anon family groups are a fellowship of relatives and friends of alcoholics who share their experience, strength, and hope in order to solve their common problems. We believe alcoholism is a family illness and that changed attitudes can aid recovery. Al-Anon is not allied with any sect, denomination, political entity, organization, or institution.
Does not engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any cause.
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There are no dues for membership. Al-Anon is self-supporting through its own voluntary contributions. Al-Anon has but one purpose, to help families of alcoholics. We do this by practicing the 12 steps, by welcoming and giving comfort to families of alcoholics, and by giving understanding and encouragement to the alcoholic. Thank you. Thank you, Tish and Dorothy. Now, when I got Mary Pearl on the phone and got her to agree to come down here, she made a wonderful suggestion, and boy was it a good one.
She told me she sponsored a young lady over in Houston, and she would get some gals together and come. And let me tell you, we filled a whole house over here with the gals from Houston and surrounding area. Linda, I don't know where you're sitting, but would you come up and, oh, there you are, and introduce Mary Pearl because I know you know her better than anybody. Thank you so much for all of this.
Hi, everyone. My name is Linda, and I am a grateful Al-Anon. And I think that I have the world's best sponsor, and notice I didn't say easiest. She is not the easiest by far. I saw that. She is very strict and structured and has helped me tremendously. I met her when I had about 12 or 13 years in the program. I have 21 years today, so that sounds about, or less than that, I guess about 10 or 11 years.
And so I've been working with her for quite a while, and she told me when she started sponsoring me, she said, if you do these steps like I do them, if you take them like I take them, you'll be a different person. And I am today. And she changed tremendously in that period of time that we worked the steps, and still today because we continue those. So it's with great pride that I introduce a wonderful lady, Mary Pearl.
Thank you. It's a very special day to be here because today happens to be Linda's birthday. So can we sing happy birthday to my baby? Belly button. I hate to admit it, but it's my belly button. Speed limit birthday. 65 or 70. Okay, who's going to start? Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Linda. Happy birthday to you. Keep coming back. I love you. Happy. She had one of those little I'll get you for this grins.
Did you notice that? Okay. My name is Mary Pearl, and I'm an Al-Anon who's happy, joyous, and free most days. I want to thank Jan for inviting me to come down here this weekend. It's always nice to be invited to go somewhere, and it's always super special when I get to go, and I get to be with family and be with friends I've met before and then new friends that I haven't met. So I just want to thank you all for having me and especially Jan for inviting me and those little phone calls that I would get just off and on.
And don't forget we're down here, and we're so excited, you know. And I thought, my God, we're going to have to send her to pins before it's over with. She's just getting a little too excited here. But I thank you very much for the opportunity. You know, I owe my way of life to Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon, you know. If it hadn't been for the alcoholic in my life, as he reminds me all the time, if it wasn't for me, you wouldn't be where you are today.
And I remind him if it wasn't for God, he wouldn't be where he is today. He'd be dead somewhere, you know. Anyway, to give you just, I always like to tell you where this all started. You know, I'm a big history buff. I like to know how things get started in the Y's and the wherefores. You know, we have to analyze everything. And back in, oh, 1988, there were nine of us in my home group that all wanted a divorce on the same night.
I bet you can relate to that, you know. We were talking before the meeting, and we had an attorney in our midst,
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and we asked, could we get a group rate? Then, after all, there was nine of us, you know, and she said no. And so we first thought, cheap bitch, you know. And then she won't even give us a break on this, you know. But the thing about it is that particular attorney I work for today, and she doesn't handle any cases for program people. She doesn't want to have the possibility of any bad feelings or what have you coming from any kind of her work.
And I think that's a good deal. But we decided then if we were going to have to stay with those rotten people we were living with that were giving us such a pain, and there was men and women in the divorce contingency there, that we were going to have to learn how to live together a little better. And we got thinking about that, and I was saying something about, you know, there seems to be so much confusion and chaos.
There's not any unity. And when the word unity came up, then the word traditions came right after it. And so we began to look then at the traditions as a source of how to work in our relationships. And so over the next year with a lot of prayer, and we started a traditions meeting where we focused on the relationships. And the funny thing is the only one party of the relationships was in those meetings.
And whether relationships did anything, people got better by focusing on how to live with other people because there's all kinds of relationships, whether it's male, female, with your mother, your brother, your sister. You have a relationship. I mean, I had one at one time with the sheriff. And we kept meeting, you know. And I was developing a really bad relationship with the law enforcement people.
So, I mean, we have all kinds of relationships. So I don't want you to think this is just a he-she or she-she-he-he or whatever, which way your pendulum swings there. It's okay. It doesn't matter. That's not what we're about here. We're talking about people getting along with other people. And we reworded the traditions, keeping the principle of each tradition intact so that it would specifically point to something to work on in a relationship.
So if you will look on the back page of your book there, the next to the last page, I think, it will tell you that there's or maybe it's in the front on that one. It's in the front. Page five. Page five. Okay. Thank you. I just write them. I don't read them. Anyway, it used to be in the back. But anyway, that will give you an idea of what we're going to be talking about. Now, I was asked earlier today, are we going to be working out of these workbooks?
And the answer is no. What you're going to do is you're going to take these workbooks home, and you're after a lot of prayer and reading and studying the material and everything you can about that particular tradition. Then you answer those questions honestly to yourself. And then maybe share those with your partner. And maybe if your partner would like to do that with you, then you all can see. And what you're going to see is you're going to think so totally differently about the very same things.
That's the amazing thing. There are couples' meetings all over the country now, and they're using this as a format to use. And we've had a couples' group for years, and we find that the quality of our relationships, you know the thing is a relationship is never so good it cannot be improved upon. And everybody's going to have their off days, this kind of thing, and this is where we're going to learn how to get with people and be able to live with people, good days, bad days, and in between.
Having said that, we will start with Tradition 1. Tradition 1 is our common welfare comes first. A healthy relationship depends upon unity. You know, that's just like the group that is arguing and having all this ya-ya-ya-ya and gossip and stuff. You don't have much unity in a group like that. Well, the same thing, if you're having a lot of ya-ya-ya in your marriage and griping and complaining about little bitty insignificant things, which we blow into disaster so we can deal with them.
You know, I got tickled when the priest was advising us, you know, if you see anything, I'm thinking, God, you're in a room full of Al-Hanans and alcohol. We fix those things. What is the matter with you, you know? I'm sure there's somebody here who could wire something. Always seems to be in my group. In fact, I know one girl. Her nickname's Hammer because she's always repairing things. But anyway, the first thing you've got to have is unity within yourself.
If you're not having, and you say, well, how do you have unity? Unity is when you drag all the Mary Pearls together, all the Dorises together, all the Lindas together, and you have a little group there, you know, because we're different. We're a bunch of different little personalities all on the inside. And I get tickled, you know, people talk about being. and I get tickled, you know, people talk about being schizophrenic, you know,
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if you could ever get them down to two, we'd be okay. But we're more like Sybil, we have multiple personalities, depending on where we are at any given day. Take a day in PMS, that'll tell you one thing, if you think PMS is bad, wait till you hit menopause. That's when you're armed. And your personality can change, you know, it's real funny, it talks in our literature about the lightning mood swings of an alcoholic.
Well, I got a news flash. We have lightning mood swings as well. Everything can be going along just absolutely hunky-dory, and you see something that reminds you of something 25 years ago, and you immediately go back into that feeling, bring it forward, and it becomes real right now. For that moment in time. And we've got to learn how to put little stoplights and things in there that says, wait a minute, that's not here, you know.
We learn to stay where our hands are, you know. Stay right here, right now. And in order to do that, we're going to have to develop God consciousness. Because as we know in our program, oh, and I wanted to tell you, if you're new in the program, working the traditions in a relationship, you have to be well-grounded in the 12-step program before you'll be able to do the things you're going to be asked to do here.
So, don't come into the program and start working on traditions, work on personal recovery first. And this is sort of, the other is the meat and potatoes, this is the gravy. You know. Okay, so the God consciousness. Now God, when God is into a relationship, God brings good orderly directions. And hopefully there will be ears there to hear those. Because, you know, the God relationship is the most important relationship you're ever going to have.
It's the only one that will not fail you. Because human beings, by the nature of being human, are going to screw up and disappoint you and fail you and those kind of things. That's just the way human beings are. And we have to have God in there to take care of us. You know, it's like somebody gets hurt and they say, well, I'm never going to do that again. I'm never going to set myself up, you know, just to heck with everybody else.
And it's like you will deprive yourself of all of those moments of joy because you got hurt here. And what can be hurt, how can you be hurt to the point God can't heal it? How can you be that hurt? The thing is we learn to take what we have learned, the good from that and the bad, and try not to bring that into the next. But I didn't know that. You see, growing up as a child, I had all of these little defects of character that were coming along, coming in place.
And I was going to take those and they were going to grow. And you put me in a relationship with people and therefore I'm going to practice those things that I know. And I'm going to look at everybody else when the relationship doesn't work right and I'm going to say, well, if you'd have done this or if you hadn't have done that, I'd have been okay. And that's the lie we live. And the truth of the matter, nothing changes until I change.
You know? Nothing changes until you make those changes. And it can't be somebody else's fault. Because if so, then we're going to be perpetual victims. When you're blaming, you become a victim. And I don't like being a victim. I don't like those feelings that I have inside. And so I go back to the deal of I've got to accept my part in that responsibility of whatever happened. What part did I play? You know?
It's never just one person. There's always a part we play. And sometimes we love to martyr. And when we love to martyr, we'll put on our victim's shoes and run around and find a place so that somebody can take advantage of us. You know? Or we want to be the fixers of the world. We want to fix everybody else. You know why? It's much easier than trying to fix yourself. And there's another thing that is right in there, right up at the top, and that's called denial.
And you see, I don't know about you, but I do know about me. And if I have a problem and there is no seeming solution to my problem, I don't have a problem. Because if I don't have some way to fix that and get out of that, I deny it exists. And I can't stand having something I can't do anything about. And so that would be the way I would be doing my relationships. Now, to develop my God's consciousness, I do this.
I rev myself up in the morning. And I have to have reading, prayer, and meditation time. And I'm not a morning person, so I have to get up early enough to do all of this. And this is where I establish my daily contact with God. And it's like making a telephone call that you don't hang up. You lay the phone down, maybe, and you go from place to place in the room, coming back to pick up the phone. And I begin a running conversation with God.
God, do you want to go to work? Well, I don't. It's too early to be out on the roads. I feel like killing people at this hour. We were talking about that earlier today, and I was a very, very aggressive driver.
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And today, when my serenity level is not where it needs to be, and my contact with God is not where it needs to be, the first place I will see it in is the way I drive. When somebody irritates me, I have a tendency to want to yell at them, blow the horn at them, run over them, shoot them. You know, all of those things. And I go, ooh, man, are you out of whack. You know, because, see, now I know that when I have those kind of feelings, that's not what they're doing.
Because, okay, so they crowded you a little bit. So they, you know, zipped around. Aren't there days, if you be honest, when you get behind the wheel of your car, you know somehow or another you left your reflexes at home? And you do stupid things. Like you run a stop sign that you would never do, and you didn't mean to. It's like, where was I, you know? Do you realize how much we drive on automatic pilot and God takes care of us?
When you leave home and the next thing you know you're driving in the parking lot at work and you can't remember anything that happened between there? Thank God nobody stepped in front of your car. You know? It's like there, yesterday in Arkansas there was a 24-year-old girl that killed a 9-year-old child when he stopped to get off the school bus. Because she was so, her mind was somewhere else. And she didn't realize that the bus was flashing the red lights and the bars were down and she killed this child.
So now she's up for vehicular homicides, you know? And those life-changing things can happen just in that spur of the moment, you know? In that spur of the moment. So I learned then to practice that presence of God and trying to be God-centered instead of self-centered. It's my nature to be self-centered. It's my nature. I'm a human being. All of us, you know, we always, what's in it for me? What's it all about, you know?
That kind of thing. I can remember when people, my sponsor would be trying to get me out of myself and she'd say, well, look at so-and-so over here and they're living in an active situation and they're doing so much better than you. And then she'd point out somebody else and she'd say, that's a terrible tragedy. You don't have that to deal with. Can't you be grateful about anything? And I'd say, piss on them.
This is mine. You know, I could care less. I had no room for compassion or care about another person because it's all about me, you know? It's all about me. That kind of thing. And so when I began to bring God in my life, it didn't have to be about me anymore. That was where one of the differences, like I say, when you've got your God consciousness going, then there's your foundation to go forward.
And the first thing you have to do is you have to learn to accept. You have to learn to accept people as they are. But they're not going to be the way you want them to be. And I've got a newsflash. You're not the way they want you to be either. You know, if you could list how you'd want somebody to be, well, you'd want to be this, this, and this, you know, and not the way they are. And so what you're doing is you're saying you're not good enough or you're not whatever.
And I heard that all my life, not in those words, but in the attitudes and actions of people around me. And, you know, the tragedy was I wasn't the way I wanted to be either, and I didn't know how to be that way. I just didn't know. You know, I needed living 101, but I didn't have it. And, see, we have expectations of how we want people to be. We don't tell them, you know, if they love you, they ought to know.
Well, you're doomed, I'm telling you right now. They can love you to, you know, my sponsor always says he who walks in another's mind is lost. You know. When you're thinking what they're thinking, they're not thinking what you're thinking. Trust me. If they were, it would be scary for us all to be here, you know. You know, I had to learn to accept my mother as the way she was instead of the way I wanted her to be.
That was the worst relationship of my life. It was not with the alcoholic. It was with the non-alcoholic, you know, the one that had been damaged by alcoholism year after year and then had all this bitterness and fear and resentment and self-consciousness and all this inside. And so, therefore, you have to be right always. You have to be perfect always. And so your performance standard is 150%. Well, very few of us measure up to, you know, I can remember when Mama would say, clean your room, I'd go in there and I would try so desperately hard to get my room just absolutely perfect so I could get some approval, which I would think was love.
And she would come in and go, ah! You didn't do, she'd find the one thing I hadn't done. Just all the things I'd done and she'd whack me with it, you know, she'd keep on. And what happens after a while is that you don't care anymore. You don't care. It removes your desire to do because no matter what you do, you're being put down. And see, I became that kind of person. I hated that in her. And, you know, the thing about it is, find the person that you have the worst relationship with,
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take their inventory and put your name at the top. Because we hate the most what we see of ourself and other people. You know, when somebody says, you're just like, it's never good news. I have never had anybody say to me, you're just like, what, Cher or J. Lo or something like that. You know, never anything, your mother. You're just like your mother and it's like, kill me with a broken fork. You know, I mean, just beat me to death, you know.
I don't want to be like that. But I had to accept my mother as the way she was. And once I accepted her, and you can't do that without God's help, I'm here to tell you. And I'll share more about that as we go on this weekend. But I had to accept her how she was. Because if you don't, then you're not in reality. And that's just like my sister. Now, my sister and I always have had a wonderful, wonderful relationship.
And I have to accept the fact that today my sister has anoxic brain injury and my sister as I knew her is no more. And I've had to become her guardian and caretaker and whatever. And I found that caretaking is a really bad word. Because people who are in the profession do not call themselves caretakers. They call themselves caregivers. So my sister's illness has taught me an awful lot. You know, it hasn't done a hell of a lot for her.
But, you know, it's taught me a lot. And I think so many times, you know, how God brings things into your life. And Dorothy right now is happy as content as anybody can be that's out of their mind. You know, she has no memory. You know, 15 minutes from now she won't remember what happened 15 minutes before. But she remembers things 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years ago. But she doesn't remember that she's asked you the same question four times in a row.
And you want to get her by the throat and say, listen to me. Have you ever tried to talk sense to somebody who's drunk? You're wasting your time. You know, when somebody's brain has been affected in any way, be it with alcohol or with illness or what have you, when the brain's not, you can't do logic with people who don't have that ability. And if you try, you only drive yourself nuts. You know? So that's why I'm saying you have to accept people as they are.
Well, I always have a problem with acceptance because, you see, I'm a fighter. You know, there's people I found in there when I got to Al-Anon that we fall into basically two categories. We have the fighters and the doormats. And there's some that are sort of part of one of each. But basically you have a predominant one. Well, naturally, I'm not going to be the doormat. I am the steamroller. I am not the doormat.
And so I go down fighting, you know, which is really hard. You know, it would be so much easier if you could give up at the beginning and say, I can't do this, I'm powerless. I can't believe I am powerless over certain things. I just can't believe that life would be so cruel. You know, I just can't believe that, you know. When I was about eight or nine years old, I used to clean my sister's house for spending money, and she had a Siamese cat.
And unbeknownst to us, my brother-in-law, when Dorothy was away, would torture the cat. And he would suck its tail up a vacuum cleaner hose. Would terrorize the cat. Well, that's fine if it's a little kitty cat, but this was a 21-pound Siamese. And so I'm over there cleaning her house one day, and as I run the vacuum cleaner under the bed, the cat comes out, grabs me, sinks his teeth in, his claws.
I had 18 stitches. I don't like cats. And that was even before I knew it, but I didn't like my brother-in-law the first time I saw him. I was four years old. I was very perceptive as a child. And his parents were alcoholic. I mean, I could always find that sick one. And anyway, as a result, I don't trust cats. And you know how cats want to curl around your leg? Well, see, I've got a scar that says cats cannot be trusted.
So that's my experience. So I don't like cats. I'm a dog person, and I'm not saying that because I know there's cat people out here. But that's my experience. And all of a sudden, I decided one summer that I would have the flower bed to end all flower beds. And my husband is always one that's manicuring the yard, sometimes with cuticle scissors. I swear. He does. I mean, the yard is, I mean, he's just not happy unless it's out there perfect.
And I decided I'd take the front flower bed, and I would claim it as my own, and I would show him that he wasn't the only one in the family that could do flowers and stuff and landscaping. And so my bed was 15 foot deep and 50 foot wide. You find something amazing about that? If it's worth doing, do it until you die on the spot, for God's sake. So here I am, you know, and I decided I wanted to have this free-form flower bed, and so I
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made a little template of how I wanted it to be, and then I went to the quarry with my template and I got me these water-washed rocks from New Mexico, they're river rocks from New Mexico, and I went to the quarry and I picked them all out one at a time and laid them on my template because they all had to be the same size, you know, God forbid we should not have this perfect. And so it took an entire day and the guy at the quarry was very amazed, he said, I've never seen anybody do that before. Well, I didn't need more, I didn't need too many rocks and I didn't want to leave with not enough, so if you do it on the thing you get it perfect, I mean, there you are, you know. So I go home and I lay out my little border and it's great, and I put elephant ears all up along the back side of the house and I put hostas, one variegated, one solid, one variegated, one solid, all out there across the front, and I have my lighting and everything in the ground, and then I get me some plants to go between the elephant ears and that, and so I picked impatiens, 17 flats of impatiens. There's a lot of little impatiens in one flat, much less 17. You spend quite a few days digging little holes. Now you have to water them and nurture them, anybody knows that. Well, at home we have commercials, and I bet you all do down here for Miracle Grow. They have this guy stand there and say, I got a 50 pound tomato here, I did it with Miracle Grow. And so I'm thinking, why not Miracle Grow? So I go get my Miracle Grow and it says once a month to feed the thing, and I'm thinking, well, if once a month does it, well then once a week ought to be even better. Not that I'm obsessive compulsive.
And so I went out there, and you know, and before too long, there in about six weeks, I had impatiens four foot tall. It was amazing. Rainbow color, and my hostas were fabulous. I have gigantic elephant ears, and I'm going, oh, this is what, people are driving past and going, my God, have you ever seen anything like that? And I'm ready to do my Miracle Grow endorsement, just did it with Miracle Grow, you know. And then one day I look and there's a hole in the middle of my impatiens. I mean, a hole, a big hole. And I'm going, ah, ah, what happened? Because impatiens are very tender little plants, and they break real easy, you know. And I said, what has happened there? And I couldn't figure it out, and J.D. told me a day or two, he says, come here, I found out. And there was this cat.
There was this big calico cat that was laying out there in my jungle, my tropical jungle, where she would stalk my bird feeders. I can't have that. We've got to get rid of the cat. So I take the problem to my group. Now, before the group, you know how we gather before the meeting, you know, I'm not going to take up meeting time with this crap, but I make sure I get there, and I'm saying, okay, I don't do cats. How do people get rid of cats? This one is a stray. It's a feral cat. You can't get your hands on it. If I had, I would have squeezed a life from it. And I said, how do you get rid of it? And so as many people as you have there, you get that many remedies. You know how we are. We're real sick. And the first one said moth balls is what you need. So I went to the store, and I got six or eight boxes of moth balls, and I put them all out there. Now, you can smell my house from two blocks away, but it doesn't bother the cat. The cat came back. And so the next one says, well, what you need is cayenne pepper. So I went to Sam's and got me two half gallons of the cracked cayenne pepper, and I put it all over the flower bed, because you know cats walk a lot, and they lick on themselves. I have a Mexican calico. It doesn't phase my cat, let me tell you. And so I go through several more different things, and then finally it occurred to me, I have a pellet gun. And so I pump my little gun up to three, and I go out the front door, and I see the cat. And so I take a bead in on it, and I pop her in the butt, and she goes meow, and she comes back again. And I told JD, the cat is nuts.
I said, JD, it's an ala cat. It keeps doing the same thing, expecting something different. Now I can see it in the cat. I can see it in the cat. And so she came back, so I pump it up to six times now. And so when I shot her, she jumped a little higher, and then she kept on going. But in the meantime, she's eating the birds that I'm feeding out there. One morning she had one of my baby cardinals in her mouth, and one morning she had one of my little young squirrels, and bit his head off, right on my front porch in front of me. See, it's war. It is war. It's me or the cat. So I pump it up to ten. By this time I'm going out the door like this, and the cat's out there like that, you know, waiting
[00:35:00]
on each other. And at this time I beat in on the cat, and all of a sudden when I shot, this time I missed. I knocked a hole in the next door neighbor's house. I really pumped that sucker up. Well, by this time the year's over, and so now we wait until next spring, and I get my impatience, and I plant them. You know, you got to plant them every year, you know. And I get all my impatience, but thank God for the hostas and the elephant ears. You don't have to do a thing with them. And guess what? I'm doing the same thing different, not realizing I'm doing the very same thing. I get my miracle grow out, I've got the time, and here comes the holes. So I told him, I said, the cat's got to die. I said, I have had it with the cat. I'm going to kill the cat. And I said, I've got my little 38, and I am going to take her out. That's it. I gave her chance after chance. She's going. And I got a telephone call that night from a friend of mine who lives in the south, and he said he raises golden retrievers. And he said there was a little stray dog that was trying to service some of his registered dogs, and he said that he thought it came from down the road, and the guy said, no, that dog just appeared here one day. It's not my dog, feel free. So he shot him. And he said the only problem was he didn't die with the first shot.
And he said, I'll never forget that scream if I live to be a thousand. He said it severed his spine. And so, and I said, oh, God, what if I don't kill it on the first shot? You know? Now, I'm talking to my sponsor, and I'm bitching about this cat. Now, this is two years. I'm bitching about this cat. And she says, you're going to get it. I know you're going to get it. And see, she won't tell me. You know, she likes for me to figure this stuff out for myself. She says it has much more impact, you know. I'm not that well.
I'll tell them. But anyway, she said, okay. And so I'm sitting there, and I'm thinking, okay, what is it? And then it occurs to me, you're trying to change the nature of a cat. A cat is a predator. Think about it. Cats are predators. They like to catch and kill their prey, the mice and the lizards and the squirrels and the birds and what have you. This is what cats do. You provide a natural hunting habitat for the cat, what is the cat going to do? Okay. Now, my sponsor's real sick, and she's told me that I need to learn to accept things to the point I wouldn't change them even if I could. Now, that is real sick.
So I've learned in the program you act as if until it becomes. So I go out on my front porch. The cat's like this, you know. And I said, welcome to my yard, F.C. It's the cat's name. Make yourself at home. Do whatever you want to do out here. Eat the birds, eat the squirrels. What the hell do I care? And I walk back in my house, and I sit down, and J.D.'s going, I don't believe I saw that. And I said, I'm working on it. I'm saying the words until they become. So the next morning I get up, and I'm doing my reading, prayer, and meditation. And I walk over, and I look out my front window, and I began, if one of my squirrels is not gnawing a limb off of my Japanese bonsai tree. I have a Japanese lacy leaf red bonsai tree. And this squirrel is, you know how they'll just gnaw it off like a pair of clippers. And I went running out the door screaming, where the hell is my cat? Eat this squirrel. And I'm just looking around, and there's a guy driving by going, and I think, what's it to you, fella? And I happen to look down, oh, I'm out here in my panties and bra. You see, my focus is so tunnel vision. Protect the plants, protect the plants. I forgot, I hadn't gotten dressed yet. So I go back in the house, and I'm sitting in the house. I never saw the cat again. You know, and my sponsor tells me time after time, when you accept it, the problem goes away. And you see, once I welcomed the cat to the yard, it was perverse enough that it didn't want to be there anymore. And it went away.
Several years later, I'm up in British Columbia, and I'm checking in in this little bitty teeny tiny motel on the coast overlooking, and there's orcas playing out there, and it's just absolutely gorgeous. And what do they have sitting on the desk? A giant calico cat. And I went, oh, FC, you went to BC. Now, I have seen offspring of FC, but I've never seen FC again, you know.
[00:40:04]
It's amazing. But see, that's the thing. I never saw that I was doing the same thing, and I was the one that was having the problem. The cat was just doing what a cat does. And how many times do we find ourselves in that same kind of position that something or someone is just doing what they are, and we don't like it, and it's not the way we want it, and so we fight it. And I fought a dumb cat for two years after many, many years in the program. See, some of us are sicker than others, you know.
Okay, you've got to have willingness. You've got to be willing to do your own part. You've got to listen to the feelings and ideas of others, and you're going to have to be willing to be wrong a lot. Yeah, that's a sire, isn't it? You have to be willing to be wrong. In other words, if you want to have harmony in your relationship, you've got to be willing to do whatever is necessary for you to do to do your part to bring that to come to pass.
You can't do it for somebody else, but you do it for yourself. You've got to learn to pull together instead of the fights that push you apart. You know, find areas on which you have an agreement. You know, it's like with J.D., sometimes I get so irritated and aggravated with him. He's male. You know, I heard a long time ago, if it's got tires and testicles, you're going to have problems. I found that to be true. But you know, I have to have gratitude for all the years we've been together because, you know, I haven't been a joyride all those years either. You know, some days, you know, some days you're the barrel and some days you're the apple. You know, it's just funny. You know, I had to be willing to be wrong in the relationship. When the first time I admitted to J.D. I was wrong was when I chased him down over at my mother's because he had stolen some cigarettes from me. He decided he quit smoking and all he did was quit buying. And that would irritate the living heck out of me when I'd wake up in the morning and there would be my empty pack. Now, how would he have felt that I drank his booze the night before? I think he would have had a word to say about that. But you know, that wasn't my addiction. But my addiction was to those cigarettes. That was my little crutch at that point in my life. And I just threw an absolute fit. And so the phone rang. See, God's always working in your life, whether you notice it or not. And it was another Al-Anon member. And she called to find out what kind of day I was having. I said, I'm having a rotten day. My husband stole my cigarettes.
And she said, well, bless his heart. She says, do you not have any money? Yes, I have some money. Why? Well, how far are you away from the store? We have a little neighborhood grocery about four blocks away. Then why don't you go get you some cigarettes? Because he should have to be the one to replace him because he was the one that smoked it, she says. But he's not going without the cigarette. He's going crazy. I don't like logic like that.
You see, I wanted to get the mileage out of the suffering. And she said, and to throw a fit like that, oh, you owe an amends. I said, I'm not to that step. I've always got an answer. Always got an answer. Whether I say it out loud, my mind is saying it, you know. And she says, well, that step is for the wreckage of the past. This is the wreckage of the moment. You might go over there and admit you're wrong. And I said, he stole my cigarette and I'm going to admit I was wrong. I don't get this. And she said, you were wrong to throw a fit. How important is a cigarette? Is it worth your relationship? Is it worth your feelings to have bad feelings amongst one another for the rest of the week? Is that the ice cream man? Surely nobody has a phone on. There's only two reasons to have a cell phone on, ladies, this weekend. And one is if you are an organ donor or if you're an organ recipient. If you're not, don't. Okay. So I went there over, he was mowing my mother's back field and I went over there and he squared off to have the fight. And instead I went up to him and I said, what's wrong? Now, my husband has a 65% hearing loss. And he said, what? And I said, I was wrong. And he looked at me and he said, what? And I said, I was wrong.
He said, Oh. And then tears began to form in his eyes. And he looked at me and he said, you've never ever told me you were wrong before. I said, that's a lie. were wrong before. I said, that's a lie? And you know how your mind will go searching,
[00:45:00]
searching, searching, you know, trying to remember the incident so you can prove that they're wrong and you're right? And it's going searching, searching, searching, not found. And I was just dumbfounded because so many times when we had fights and everything, I'd start those fights, but he had to be the one to give up. I would not admit I started the fight when I knew I had started the fight. It's because I couldn't be wrong. If you're wrong, you're a mistake. I couldn't be wrong. See, that was my mom. One more time, I'm being just like my mom. And so anyway, he came over to me and he said, thank you. Not like that dumb commercial that we have now. Is that not the dumbest thing? Thank you. You ask me if I'm pregnant and you're fixing it with thank you? I don't think so. You have to learn to be honest with one another. You know, honest about your feelings, how you really, you know.
And you've got to remove such thinking from your mind such as you make me, you make me feel, you make me angry, you make me mad, you make me sad. You don't make me anything. I choose those things. They can be thrown out and we are the ones that catch them and gather them in. And sometimes, you know, we make fantastic saves like they do in tennis to be able to get that. You know, we do this. And the bottom line is you've got to take that thinking away. And the way you do it first is take it out of your vocabulary. And you quit saying it long enough, then you'll quit thinking it long enough. And then you've got to take away justification and rationalization. This is just the way you make an excuse for bad behavior. Make it okay. You justify it, you rationalize it so that you can give yourself a good motive for a bad action. And these will kill you. These things will kill you.
And you've got to develop communication skills. And the one that was the hardest for me to develop being a talker was listening. You know, I see your mouth moving, but I'm thinking of what I'm going to say when you shut up. You know, what I have to say, you know, your ideas are mediocre at best. Mine are scathingly brilliant. You know, that kind of a deal. And so with JD, especially with his hearing loss, I learned that I have to repeat things.
And I ask him to repeat back to me because I can see sometimes his reaction is so out of whack from what I said or what I thought I said, what I meant to say. And I'll say, what did you hear me say? And how did you hear me say it? And then he'll repeat back. And sometimes it is the hearing loss which changes the words, the sounds a little. And sometimes it's the mouth and the body language that when he pulls it back, I go, no wonder.
I didn't mean it like that. Well, that's how, because sometimes when I'm telling you about something, I have a tendency to make it sound like I'm ordering you to do something. And that's not what I mean to do, but that's how it's coming across because that's what I'm doing. You know, it took me a while to realize it. When I say, did you take out the trash? That sounds like you didn't take out the trash. I know the answer to that question already and you're wrong because you didn't and you shouldn't. Get off your butt and do it now. That's what it sounds like because that's what I mean. Get off your butt and do it now. You know? And so he'll put, he'll catch me on that. I've learned to keep my mouth shut when I feel threatened and that's real difficult because you see when you feel threatened, you normally want to defend yourself. And I know that I can fast talk him out of a situation. I know I can do that. And so therefore he has a tendency not to want to talk to me about things because I don't, if I don't like what he's saying or if his feeling scares me or whatever, I try to convince him why he shouldn't feel the way he feels. But that's stupid because once you felt it, you can't unfeel it. You know? It just doesn't happen. But that's what I had done for years. Okay? You got to use an open mind. And in doing that, I had to remove my sponsor said, yes, but what if, and I know. You know? Because I lived in, yes, but, and that is a closed mind. Yes, I hear what you're saying, but you're crazier than shit because here's the real answer. And the what if was I'm living in the future. That's what IEF is about. In future. Future hadn't happened yet. You're not in reality. Back to the real world. Where are your hands today? You know? And then the I know, as long as I know you, I can never learn a thing because I know. And one thing I know today is I don't know a lot of things that I thought I knew. And you have to ask yourself what is most important. Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? Have you ever noticed how we will take some little bitty insignificant thing and where we just
[00:50:00]
got to be right, got to be right, got to be right. And then we're totally miserable. Even if they allow us and say, okay, you're right. It doesn't, it's such a weak victory. It doesn't feel good. You know, it's because we have, we have pushed that and push that till we don't have good feelings. So you can be right or you can be happy. It's a choice. Now there's such a thing about fools. I call my sponsor's house one night, she wasn't there and he answered the phone and I was, so whoever answers it gets the call. That's the way I look at it.
So I'm telling him all about JD and about this and about that. And what he said and I said, and he said, and I said, and he said, you know, it takes two fools to argue. Well, see, I don't like that already. How dare he? He says, a wise man won't argue with a fool. Yeah. So obviously it must take two fools to argue here. I'll talk to you another time. Because what do you really get in an argument? Do you ever really get somebody when you're arguing? All I do when you argue with me is I dig my heels in and I'll defend my side and I'm never going to give in. Even if I'd had a hope of changing my mind about it, once you start trying to force me to change my mind, that forced change just doesn't work.
You know, you can drag them off in the back of a paddy wagon to treatment. How successful is that? They get out of treatment, right back to what, you know, you can't force change in another person. You cannot do that. There was another thing I was confused about and that was need and love. You see, when he said to me, I want you, I need you, love was in third place. I want you, I want you, baby. That sounds good, doesn't it? I need you.
Oh, that sounds better than anything in the world. Because you know you have more job stability with need, they keep you longer. Love, okay. You know, it wasn't a big deal because I wanted him to want me and I wanted to create situations where he had to have me there to do things for him, to fix things for him so that I was assured of my security in the situation. And that's crazy because you're never really secure. You're always going to have to have something more and more to keep doing that for you because see that really doesn't work. And then I had a tendency to take hostages, you know. I had to be bound to someone to be okay. And that makes your circle of friends small. You know, not everybody will be taken hostage, you know. And so what I would do is I would have one or two and you hang on to them like dear life and you see somebody else come and maybe they're threatening and they want them to be their friend too, you got to do something so that they won't be their friend. So tell some ratty something to the new person about the old person that doesn't make any difference if it's true or not but it will turn them off. So then you've captured your person again over here. I started that when I was six years old. I was a very lonely child. My oldest brother was dead before I was born and my other brother was married when I was like three or four years old and Dorothy got married when I was like five or six. And so therefore I'm an only child. And there was eleven boys and one girl that lived on the highway we lived on. And so that girl was very important to me. So I had to have her. And so I took a lot of stuff, emotional abuse off of her like you know she'd come down to the house and want to ride my bicycle. She didn't have one.
I don't mind letting her ride my bicycle but she didn't want me to ride my bicycle. You know she'd take her turn then she'd want it again and I'd let her have it because see she'd say if I can't ride I'll go home. And I hated her for saying that but I hated me more for doing it, for needing her there so I wouldn't be lonely. Starting those patterns as a teeny little child. See these things don't happen to us when we're grown. We think it's back in. No. These things are all set in place. I did not have one defective character as the result of alcoholism. But alcoholism was a miracle girl. It all grew big and wide and what have you. That's what alcohol did for mine. Okay. And I have to know the difference between wants and needs. And so many times I don't know what the differences are because you see if I want it two times I need it. You know I can go real quick. If you don't believe that go shopping. Go down and just look at the stuff in the wind and go God isn't that pretty. Oh gosh I'd love to have that. I need that. It just doesn't take but a split second to go there you know. And then you've got to have some balance. Well what is balance?
[00:55:03]
You know. What is balance? I didn't have a clue. You know I found that when I came in the program I was like way over here. And so I started working in the program and I also went way over here. You know a person of extremes just back and forth. And it took a long time before that pendulum could slow down and get to the middle where I didn't have to have the excitement of the crisis or of the wonder of the miracle over here but I could be content to live each day on life's terms. And you need to have balances in all those areas. And I had to make us a priority instead of just me. You know when I came in the program they said take your focus off the alcoholic and put it on yourself.
That's an excellent suggestion. However like every other thing I've done I do it to extremes. And so I would do things like I'm going to go to the movie tomorrow night. If you want to go with me you can. But you don't have to go with me in order for me to go and have a good time. You're just not that necessary. But if you'd like to go you're welcome. That was his invitation to go with me to the movie. Do you understand why he declined? See I'd carry that just a little too far one more time. And then in meditation and prayer I would ask God to show me how to be a better partner. And you know the fellowship works because we're a fellowship of equals. No one here has any better whatever than anybody else. We're all equals in here. I may be standing up here today. You may be standing up there next week. You know it doesn't matter. And don't take just because Mary Pearl says it that it has more validity than somebody else says it. Never discount a message because of a messenger you know. And so I've been asking God to do that. And so I have to accept progress rather than perfection. And I have to share what I hear. And the hearing I have to remember that I have a tendency to hear things the way I want to hear them. I want to see things the way I want to see them. And ask God to show me reality in that. And I had to change my attitudes on things. And that came as a result of prayer and meditation because I can't change me. You know step seven says we ask God to make those changes.
We just become ready and God makes the changes. If I could have made the changes I wouldn't need God in my life. But I can't do that. Fix. Self can't fix self unfortunately. And then I realized there's a whole world of God language out there. And by that the God language is always, never. Because you don't always anything. You don't never anything. Just as long as you say I'll never do that again. You are doomed to do it again. I'm sorry.
You know that's the way it's going to be. You know there was another one the forever. Forever is a word I can't do. But that's a God word. Promise was a God word. Because when I'd hear JD tell me I promise I'll do this or I'll promise I'll never do that again. I saw the movie The Ten Commandments with Moses on the mountain with the tablets. And God writing it on there. I promise with a thunderbolt. And then of course he wouldn't be able to keep it. And I would feel destroyed, devastated, so hurt I took it personal. And the problem was he was trying but he wasn't you know he's a human being. He's not God.
And I put too much into that word. So I told him I said instead of saying promise would you tell me you'll try to do different. I'll give you some slack on try. But when you promise I write it in stone. And I said I can't help. That's just the way my that's the way my brain functions here. And I have to realize that all these expectations that I put out are just premeditated resentments. Because when I put an expectation on you you're doomed to failure. And when you fail I'm hurt. I take it personal. And then I get resentful.
You know. And I have to get over the idea that I always know best. You know J.D. is a rose grower has been for years years long before we met. He was big into his gardening and his rose growing. And he had a bunch of roses where they used to the rose garden was in the backyard till our trees got too big and then they cut the sun out so we had to move it. But right along the edge of the house there he says I figured out why these roses don't do as well. I said why. He says it's the rain coming off of the roof. He says it's picking up those granules or whatever and it's going down in that soil. And I said J.D.
that's a crop. Now what do I know about growing roses. You go down to the florist you get one. That's how you grow a rose. I mean everybody knows that you know. And here he's got this hundred and fifty different varieties of roses and yet I know. I don't know a thing about roses. And so I told him, I said, I'll kiss your butt in the middle of Healy Street. He wanted to put gutters, and that was his justification for putting the gutters.
[01:00:01]
And I said, well, I'll kiss your butt in the middle of the street if that helps. And when those began to butt up, I wanted to go out there and salt them. I wanted to go out there and put sea salt around the roots so it'd kill them so I could be right. And I was telling my sponsor, and she said, what a mean, petty little whip you are. I said, okay, I can stand the truth, you know, it's okay. And I realized, that's it, I wanted to be right so bad, you know, so I told him when they were blooming, he brought them in, made a big bouquet on the table.
And he says, those are, I said, I know, they're off the back row, I saw them the other day. And I said, you go out and bear it, and I'll come kiss it. And he laughed. He said, it's not necessary. I just wanted you to be willing. Tradition two. For our family or relationship purpose, there's but one authority, a loving God as he expresses himself in our informed family conscience. Each partner is God's trusted servant, neither governs.
Well, I've always been a dominating type person, and I'm going to tell you why. When you are totally fear-based, you are a manager and controller of the first degree. Because that's how you maintain your little world around you, is you've got to be able to manage and control all those things so that you don't have to do differently. Because you don't know how, and you're afraid, so you want to hold on to anything around you.
And I know you find that hard to believe. You know, and I like playing God, because it made me feel indispensable, gave me a feeling of importance if you obeyed that kind of thing. And I felt like I had the divine right to manage and control, that God gave me this gift. And it was real funny, because, you know, when I got into the program, I was doing my first inventory, all of the things I thought were my best assets turned out to be my worst defects.
And the things that I thought were my worst defects, like crying or something like that, these were things that I needed to do, you know. Those were the more human qualities. And it's amazing how I got wired backwards, you know. But anyway, when unity doesn't exist, love won't either, because love can't grow under those conditions, you know. Love can't, trust can't grow without being damaged. And humility exists when this is in practice, because God's in charge, not one of us.
And you know, I can take stuff from God a lot easier than I can take it from somebody else telling me, that kind of thing. And so control was comfortable, but with control comes responsibility. And when you're responsible for everything, and it goes wrong, guess who's responsible? And so my thing was, somebody didn't follow the plan. If you had done what I said, exactly like I said it, then this wouldn't have happened, see, you know, that fight to the death thing.
And that's because my self-esteem was low. And when your self-esteem is low, you cannot make mistakes. You can't make mistakes. Your self-esteem will not allow you to do that. It's going, no, no, no, can't be wrong. And I found out the reason I had problems in my relationships all these years is I never brought God into my relationships. Never did I bring God. And that would account for the lack of the quality and quantity of people in my life.
Now in this tradition, it talks about an informed family conscience. This is where everybody in the unit gets together and everybody shares what they know to the best of their ability, so that you have all the information that you can possibly have before you make a decision. Now there's only two of us, so now how are we going to make decisions, you know? Our decisions used to be, he had a definite what he wanted, I had what I wanted, and then we had to find a compromise in the middle.
Sometimes this was crazy. He wanted a sports car, he wanted a red sports car, and I wanted a big station wagon, as he called it, the hearse. And I told him I didn't want that little piss ant to have to put on and take off. So we had all these little comments, so what did we get? We bought a GMC truck. Nobody wanted that. You never made decisions like that, you know? We found that when we bring God into the decision-making process, you know, it's like when we sit down and we bring all this information together, if we can't come up with an agreeable decision, then we need to go back, we need to pray about this, we need to see what God would have us to do.
And sometimes after that period of prayer, you'll find that you can negotiate, you don't have to be dug in, you know? And you can give a little, or he can give a little, or sometimes there's a third solution
[01:05:00]
you never saw before that now you can see, because God brings light to the situation. And you know, my mother used to have a rule at home, and I would say, Mama, can I go do so-and-so? And she'd say, I need to think about it. I'd go, what's to think about? I mean, I'm going down to Shirley's house, I mean, how far can that be, you know? It's seven houses down the road. What's the big deal? She said, you want an answer right now?
I said, yeah. She said, no. I can wait for an answer. And you know, today, that's the way I feel, but I don't like to be forced into making major decisions without having time to think about it and pray about it, and if you want to know right now, then the answer's no. You know, and that's pretty simple. I also believe in the blessed or blocket prayers. You know, I ask God when I'm praying about something, I'll say, God, this is what I'd like to have.
Now, I don't know if that's what I need or not, but I want your will in this, so here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do this, and if you don't want me to do this, you either bless it or block it. Everything will go with it or it will be blocked. And God, please help me to recognize a shut door, because so many times my forehead gets flat from hitting a closed door, because we have a tendency to see what we want to see as our answer, and we will use the most kamehame type of justification to say, see, God wants me to do it.
And I bet you God's going, do what? You know, I always feel God has many answers to prayer. There's yes, there's no, there's not right now, there's, you've got to be kidding me. That can't be the truth, you know. So I have to realize that. We couldn't even have, we couldn't make decisions even about fun things. I bet you y'all have this too. You're going out, here's the scene. You're in the car, you're going to dinner.
Where do you want to go? Oh, I don't want, uh-huh, uh-huh, got you already. I saw that today. Just a group of Al-Anons, and I saw that. Where do you want to go? Well, I don't know. What about this place? Well, then we have this place. And they said to me, I said, I've got two requirements. It can't be Chinese or, I mean, it can't be a fish or a chicken. And so one of them says, well, what about Mexico?
I said, sounds great to me. And then they go, well, no, we can go to this and we can go to that. No, what we'll do is we'll wait until somebody else comes over and let them make the decision. It's like, is this life or death, girls? How important it's one damn meal in a lifetime, you know? But we do that. And it's like nobody wants to make the decision because if you get there and the service isn't good or something's wrong with the food that night, you don't want the other person to say, I never wanted to come here in the first place.
Or how could you pick something like this, you know? Invariably, if we have company visiting with us and we go to our favorite restaurant that we have wonderful food every time that night, the waitress will be deaf, dumb, and blind. The cook will be doing God knows what, not cooking, you know. And there'll be something wrong and you're going, it's not usually like this. They know you don't come here all the time if it's like this.
But if we can't make a decision on going to dinner, how hard is it to make other decisions, you know? In 1971, J.D. and I went on a vacation. The vacation from hell. I don't think I could have planned a more miserable vacation if I had been trying. You know, I mean, when I saw the movie with Chevy Chase where they do vacation, we were driving in that GMC pickup to Flagstaff to see the Grand Canyon, like Chevy Chase, remember?
And all of a sudden, there's a sign that says, watch out for flood damage. You're in the desert, folks. Flood? What does this mean? What would flood damage look like? Well, I can tell you, when you top the next rise and there's no road, there's a gully, now you know. But it's a little late when you're doing 70. And so I went, swing, just like Chevy, and I went, when we first saw that, I said, J.D., that's our story, we broke the tire, I mean, broke the wheel right off the truck.
We're waiting there for three or four minutes and we hear this, and it's a Volkswagen bus. Wah, smack. All four tires out. Every hour on the hour, wreckers were coming from Flagstaff to pull the idiots out of the gully, you know? Why didn't the sign say, stop, no road? Now you're driving along at 70 miles an hour and you see a sign that says, stop, no road. Do you say, I'm going to believe that? I'm going to go, you've got to be kidding me.
[01:10:06]
We went to Mexico during that trip. He got two gallons of tequila with the worm. To gross me out, he ate the worm. I said, I will never go on vacation with him again, and I didn't until after he was seven years sober, would I even attempt to be in a car away for a number of days with that man. You know, it takes a long time, because in your mind, you're seeing all this stuff and you're going, no, no, I can't do that, I can't be lost in Mexico, no, no, it can't be happening I can't be in the car with a cab driver who doesn't speak English, who just went under somebody's clothesline, oh my God, I don't believe this is happening.
You know, you tell people and they look at you and they say, that couldn't really, oh yes it did. My sister used to say, things happen to her that don't happen to another living person. You know why? I will put myself in positions another human person would never do. If it's labeled disaster area, I can't wait to get there. You know, radiation, you will be changed instantaneously, I don't believe that.
Now to show you the difference, you know, J.D. and I started going on cruises, oh what now, about eight, ten years ago, something like that. And we went on this cruise in the Caribbean and we were sitting there, we would get up early in the morning and we would go out on the islands and do everything we wanted and we'd come back and have a late lunch and take a shower and go sit on the veranda. We'd sit there and we'd hold hands, and we'd watch the sea, or we'd look at the island or whatever, sometimes read a book, sometimes take a nap, and I said, this is not nearly as exciting, but it's so much more satisfying.
You know, the need for that adrenaline rush from the cockamamie has been relieved, you know, I mean, I don't have to do that, you know, I don't have to be in the plane coming into Dallas, remember the last Delta crash in Dallas years ago? I came in the next day on the way to Colorado to a conference, and as we were coming in in our 737 to make our landing, we rolled, we did a complete flip over, never done that before.
There was a lady sitting next to me, this was her first flight, and she grabbed my leg, she says, is this normal? And I looked at her and gave her the briefest explanation I have ever given anybody, no. You see, I was so puckered to that seat. When those overheads are open and the stuff is falling out and people are screaming, it's just real hard to be calm, you know. My mama, don't need that anymore, my mama would say things to me that really screwed me up.
She'd say, can't you make JD do so and so? And when she'd say, can't you make him do this or make him do that, what does that imply? You ought to be able to do it. And so now I'd redouble my efforts. Poor JD, you know. His daddy would say things to him that nearly got him killed. You know, with the help of our parents, you know, we almost killed each other, you know. His daddy would say, Jim, you let that woman get the pants on, you go over there and get the pants off of her.
And so JD would tank up and come home to retrieve his pants and he'd get the shit stomped out of him, you know what I mean? He'd go back over to his dad and say, Jim, what happened to you? You got black eyes. And he said, doorknob. And he said, two side by side. You don't come in drunk trying to search yourself. Not good. Did you ever think about courtesy? We're more courteous to a complete stranger than we are the people in our own home.
You know, somebody in your home asks you a question, is it stupid? You don't say, well darling. Don't say, well darling, you go, what is the matter with you? Someone can come to your front door with a stupid, oh, let me help you, you know, we do that kind of thing, we're so mixed up, that's just like, you know, J.D. would have
[01:15:04]
a tendency to obligate me for things, Mary Pearl will fix this for the potluck, Mary Pearl will do this, Mary Pearl will do that, and then all of a sudden one day it occurred to Mary Pearl, I don't have to do that, just because he obligates, he's obligating himself, he's not obligating Mary Pearl, I'm not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and whether I take food to the potluck or not will be my choice, not his choice.
You know, and I realized, I had obligated him so many times, my husband's a welder, somebody will say something, oh, J.D. will fix that, now J.D. works all day welding, he comes home, he does not want to weld, that's not high on his list to do, when he comes home, he didn't want to do that, and so I'd have to keep on him and on him, but I told so and so to do it, he'll make me look bad, he said, well, why do you volunteer my time?
That wasn't very courteous, you know, and if he had done me that way, so it was so funny because he came in one night and he said, you need to make a couple of pans of brownies for the meeting Saturday night, and I said, I'm not making brownies for the meeting, he said, why not? I said, I don't want to, he said, but I told him you'd make them, I said, so then you make them, he got to be kidding me, J.D.'s, you know, at that time, he could do weenies, that was it, and one time I came in and J.D. had had a picnic in the kitchen and he had roasted weenies on the little hangers over the gas stove, do I have to tell you what the stove looks like with all that grease burnt around it?
He never put it in that one again, but, you know, I'm just saying, I'm not going to make the brownies, and he said, but, and I went, so here it is Friday night and he says, we got to have the brownies, and I said, read my lips, I'm not making brownies, oh God, and so he goes tearing off to the grocery store and he comes back with two boxes of brownie mix, you know, you know what the hardest thing was?
To leave the kitchen. I wanted to be in there to say, don't mess up my stove, don't use this pan, you need to use that pan, and you don't do it to this, you don't, I wanted to, I wanted to do everything, I wanted to make those brownies rather than to have him screw up my kitchen, and I went in, went into another room and called somebody and talked to them, keep me out of there, you know, I've got to get me out of there, and, you know, that was two things, I found out that, number one, JD can make brownies, you know, he can add water and stir, huh, but you know what?
JD found out he could make brownies, and his self-esteem, when he went and took the brownies and everything, you know, everybody's saying, oh, Mary Pearl's brownies, and he goes, no, I made them, and then they tasted them and they said, well, these are great brownies, and they were, they were really good brownies, but see, that was giving him the dignity to let him fail if he has to, you know, sometimes you have to give the people you love the dignity to fail, because how did you learn?
By doing it wrong, that's usually how we learn, by process of elimination, we do it wrong until we hit the right formula, you know, when I first got married, I could not cook at all, my sister had been such an abysmal failure in the kitchen department that my mother wouldn't let me, she'd say, I don't want you screwing up my kitchen, I don't want you doing this, I don't want you doing that, and so she would not let me cook anything, so now here I get married, and I was given a set of cast iron cookware for a wedding gift, now, you know, this is back in 1960, you know, that's a long time ago, and I knew it was more modern than mother's, because this was gray and mama's was black, I mean, you know, you could look at that and see that, you know, so I lived two doors down from the fire department, I was in a rented house, and I went in there and put my bacon in the skillet, and I mean, it welded right to the skillet, there was no getting that bacon out, you couldn't even scrape it up, I mean, it just sort of welded right there, you know, and I'm going, oh God, you know, that doesn't look good, so I got another skillet, and I put the eggs in, you turn it upside down, the eggs were part of the skillet, and I called my mama, and I said, there's something wrong, and she says, did you season it, and I said, salt and pepper, and she said, no, she says, did you season it, and I said, well, what are you talking about, because in the instructions, it didn't say what you, she said, you put some grease in it, and you put it in the oven, and you bake it at 450 degrees for so many hours until it seasons, and then you can cook in them, okay.