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Source: Mary T. (Pearl) – Traditions in Healthy Relationships – Part 4 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: mary-t-pearl-traditions-in-healthy-relationships-part-4-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:19:12
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Dentist, when I was nine years old, Daddy took me to the dentist and I had a bad little tooth and they pulled that one and they dentisted the one next to it, it needs a filling. And I was doing a little tap dance in the chair at the time. And you know, back then, they didn't give you Novocaine. And so he's gonna drill on this tooth right next to the one he's just taken out. And he dropped the drill in my mouth.
And to this day, that tooth has never, it's under there, but when they x-ray it, they see it, but it never came up. It just killed the tooth under there. And so this was a horrible experience. Also, when you're a little kid, and when I was a little kid, you went to the dentist and it was sort of like a barber chair. And it looked like you had this big black tarantula hanging over the top, terrified of spiders.
You know, I had to figure out where was that fear coming from? Daddy got bit by a black widow one time when we were out fishing at night and frog gigging. And the next morning, if I hadn't have known who my daddy was, I wouldn't have recognized him. His face was so swollen, they rushed him to the hospital. He was in the hospital for three months, nearly died. And so whenever I see a spider, my mind says, it's gonna eat your face.
See, it goes back to that. And the thing about it is, that's always gonna be the first thing that comes to my mind. And then I go, no, that was then, this is now. You can kill the spider. I don't know that I could kill a tarantula. I started off with ditzy, bitzy, teeny, weeny spiders. And I got nowhere, I just snuff them out, you know? But something like a tarantula that can jump at you, you know, I might let you kill that one.
You know? I'm not above calling for help, let me tell you. Because usually J.D. told me that any spider that I came in contact with dies shortly thereafter from broken eardrums. Because I can let out the spider yell. And if they're this big, they look like a dinner plate to me. Because if you notice, fear is a magnifier. Fear makes things bigger than what they are, you know? And so anyway, I'm thinking about that dentist thing and all that pain.
And so from then on, I never mention if I have a toothache. Never. And so what happens when you don't mention you have a toothache? Well, you know, it just won't go away. Toothaches aren't like that. You know, after a while, you can't stay anything hot in your mouth. After a while, you can't stay anything cold in your mouth. And after a while, you can't stay in your tongue in your mouth. And what it amounts to is that tooth is abscessing.
And what that abscess is, it's a little pocket of infection on the root of it. And it is slowly but surely pulling your tooth. It's like cutting your arm off with an emery board. You can get there, but it's gonna hurt a long time. And so what they'd have to do is eventually they have to pull the tooth and you lose the tooth. Now, I'm at the hospital with Mama. She is thinking she is having a heart attack.
We get there and we determine, no, it is not a heart attack, that she is having, she has a hiatal hernia. And in the meantime, I'm sitting in the waiting room waiting on this. And I went, a feeling fell out of my mouth. A feeling that I had gotten when I lived in Newfoundland in 1962. 27 years later, it falls out. And I'm going, oh my God. Oh my God. Now, Mother may be dying, I could care less. I have a feeling in my hand.
You know what this means. You're gonna have to go get something done about it or then you'll have to go through the process of losing that tooth. And you're getting old and you don't want to. I read a lot of magazines on planes and they did a survey of nursing homes and they said that one of the things they wish they'd done differently was taking better care of their teeth. There's a lot of people in nursing homes gumming it up.
And so I said, I don't want to be one of those. So I've got to do something. And it's like, I don't know what to do. And the nurse says, it's a hiatal hernia. Don't worry about your mother. I said, I'm not, I'm not. I have lost a feeling. And what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? And so I go over, I'm right there in the emergency room. I go over to the telephone book and I look under dentist and I open the book up and there's a half page ad that says, we cater to cowards.
Thank you, God. Oh, thank you, God. And so I call. Now, I'm telling them my whole life story. You know how we have to set the stage so they'll understand where we're coming from here. And I got to the part and I told her how long it had been between dental visits, 27 years. And so she said, well, why don't you come right now? You don't ever get in to see anybody right now. And it's like, oh no. Because see, I figured that she'd give me appointment a couple of days from now.
See, God knew that if I had two days, I wouldn't go. I'd get into the process. I just wouldn't go. And so I go over there and I look and there's a little hand, an arrow that looks like a hand up these stairs to the second floor and it says, we cater to cowards.
[00:05:01]
And I think, well, I can run up those stairs or I can throw myself in the freeway. It's six of one, half dozen to me, you know. And I get up there and I'm shaking so hard when I walk in and she said, you must be Ms. Thompson. I thought, how did she know? Now, my husband, we have free dental insurance all these years. I have not used it. I don't need this insurance. I have good teeth, you know. God gave me good teeth.
He knew he was gonna need them. Well, I get up there and when he gets to filling out these forms, I can't even put my date of birth down without looking at my driver's license. I am that terrified. Absolutely terrified. And they have the little Muzak system on or whatever and they have it on the local FM station and all of a sudden, I hear this voice. That's Ann. She's a DJ at that station. That's my grandbaby in sponsorship.
That's Ann. Listen to Ann's voice. She has the most beautiful, calming voice. Thank you, God, for Ann. Oh, thank you. They call your name. Ann's out the window. You go in there and like I say, last time's a barber chair with a tarantula. I have this beautiful chaise lounge overlooking a window of the golf course with a fountain out there in the lake. Oh, man, this is better. No tarantula, thank you, God.
No tarantula. And then I have them go. And they had the panels all across the ceiling and they had poster in the one right over your chair. And my poster said, God, grant me the serenity. The serenity prayer is like God's saying, I'm here. I'm here. Because see, I needed a visible sign of God to help me through one of the most fearful things of my life. And so the dentist came in and he's a short, heavy set, little red face fella.
And he is so soft spoken that you really have to listen to hear him. And he said, I understand you're afraid. And I look over, he has my chart. It says super chicken on it. I don't care. Sounds right to me. And I told him, I said, yes. I said, I haven't been to a dentist in a lot of years and I was hurt very badly as a child. And this is before they had to give me tranquilizers and everything to even get me in the chair.
And it was a military dentist that put the filling in. And he said, well, we're going to take care of you. And he says, we're not going to hurt you. He said, I want you to know that I'm not going to hurt you. He said, you begin to feel any kind of discomfort, you just raise your hand and we will stop until it doesn't hurt. God put the very person I needed right there for me. And he filled that tooth.
I never felt a thing, you know? And I went on and went home and I thought, wow, I can go to the dentist now. So I can go to the dentist on a regular basis and take care of my teeth. Isn't that amazing? And something happens with one of my teeth. I don't go into, I go, oh, got to call Dr. Penny right away. Got to get in as soon as possible because I don't want to have to do any pain. And see, I used to prefer all that pain because the fear kept me in that pain.
And now that I know different, I don't have to suffer that pain any longer than I want to. And he knows when he gets the call, get over there. You know, I found out there were a lot of other things that I had done just that way. And I found that I would want to question, organize, analyze everything. You know, Father Hilary used to say, it doesn't matter how the horse got his ass in the mud, get it out.
You know, it doesn't matter why you're the way you are. You can change, but you've got to take that action. And so that is taking care of my responsibilities to me. And when this happened to Dorothy, the first thing I realized is I'm sitting there in the hospital day after day waiting for her to come out of the coma, if she was going to come. The neurologist told me, she said, if you have a blunt trauma to the head, we can tell by where it hit where the problem's going to be.
But she says, in the case of your sister, anoxic brain injury, it's like it rains across your brain. And we don't know what all is going to be infected until she comes to and we can find out as time goes on. And so as I'm sitting there, I realized, I'm shaking all the time, just like this, just like I had DTs or something, I'm shaking. And my sister's doctor told me, she said, you need to see a physician, there's something wrong.
And I said, there can't be anything wrong. She says, well, it's not normal. She said, you can be in shock. And I started shaking as soon as I got to the hospital with Dorothy and I could not calm it down. So I went to a new primary care doctor, JD, primary care doctor, JD's insurance had changed.
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And so I went to him and they were doing a routine physical and they said, there's something wrong with your heart. We're going to send you to a cardiologist. And so I went to the cardiologist and immediately, you know, failed my stress test. And then it came time for me to have to go and they were going to give you a nuclear stress test. And they said, there is something seriously wrong with your heart.
And I was terrified and I was talking to Linda and Linda says, I'll come and I'll go with you. And so God sent Linda from Houston to hold my hand and to go with me through one of the most terrifying parts of my life. And I'll be forever grateful. And I failed that nuclear stress test too. And they said, you're going to have to have a heart catheterization. And so now here I am in one hospital and my sister's in the other.
And I know I got to take care of me so I can take care of her. What's going to happen to Dorothy if something happens to me? We're all we have left in the whole world. And that morning I was so terrified and I heard the nurses talking. There was another lady going to have a procedure and they were getting both of us ready at the same time. And she said, this lady over here, her husband's out in the waiting room to come and visit with her until time.
And the rest of the waiting room is for this lady over here. And my home group came and they surrounded my bed and they held my hands and they prayed for me. And all that fear went away. And I went in there and the doctor told JD, he said, you know, I was really expecting to have to rush her right into heart surgery. And he says, but I think we can address this without surgery at this time. She may probably have to have stents put in later on.
But he says, for today, you know? And so who knows, my sister's incident may have saved my life because you see, I had no clue I had anything wrong with my heart. And I could have been flying somewhere and dropped dead of a heart attack, never had a clue. You know, my sister may have given her life so that I may have one. I don't know. I just know that God goes ahead of me. And I know that I have a responsibility to take care of me so that I can take care of my sister.
Why don't we have a break for lunch? Why don't we have a break for lunch? We're on Tradition 8. Our marriage or relationship should remain forever a free-giving relationship one to another. Do you keep score? Yeah. It's sort of like, that's the fit. You know, I've had to tell you 16 times to take out the garbage, not that I'm counting. You know, I always felt like that I gave for fun and for free. I always felt that way.
You know, feelings aren't necessarily facts. Just because I felt it didn't mean it was true. And when I'd give something to you, I gave it to you freely. However, later down the road, if there was an opportunity for you to do something for me and you didn't, that's when I called in the marker. After all I've done for you. How could you not do this one small thing for me? And I didn't realize that that wasn't a gift.
Now see, I hated my mother's way of giving gifts. My mother gave gifts with instructions. She'd give you something and she'd tell you what you could do with it, when you could do with it, how you could do with it and what not to do with it. That wasn't a gift. I wish she wouldn't give me anything. I remember one year she said, what would you like for your birthday? I said, I want an antique gumball machine, mama.
That's crazy. You didn't ask me if it was sensible, mama. You asked me what I wanted. And I told you I wanted an antique gumball machine. Well, I'm not going to get you that. I had no doubt that you wouldn't, you know. And so she gives you something that you don't want, you don't like, you know. But my thing was every Christmas and birthday, she would ask me what you want. And finally I figured it out.
So she'd know what not to get me. That's how it felt like. It felt like that. You know, if you tell her, then she'll know. Then she'll know. And finally, one year at Christmas, I got three antique gumball machines. None from my mother. One from my husband who was sick of hearing me bitch about it. One from my sister who was sick of hearing me bitch about it. And one from a bunch of my pigeons that went together who was sick of hearing me bitch about it.
Not that I ever did anything like that. Did you know that comparisons are a form of scorekeeping? Comparing. Compared what I do to what somebody else does. That's scorekeeping. Making those comparisons. You know, I would tell J.D., it's your turn. You know, it's your turn. When I say that, I'm obviously keeping score. And how would I know if I hadn't had that list in my mind? You know, when I first came in the program, it was amazing to me that, like I said, it's the flick, the flicks, that's good.
The ticks and ticks.
[00:15:03]
taking out the garbage, loading the dishwasher, unloading the dishwasher, I believe every home should have two dishwashers, one in which you put dirty dishes and one in which there are clean dishes stored ready to use, somehow or another, my mind says that, you know. But anyway, we divided up job responsibility and he, one of his was the garbage and you know it's real funny, but when somebody has the responsibility of a particular item, let them do it, I couldn't, it had to be according to my job specifications, what were my expectations?
My expectation is when the trash can is full, you close it off and put it outside, that doesn't seem to be too complicated, you know, but JD is the human trash compactor, you know, we don't have one of those that does it automatically, so he just keeps squishing it down in the bottom, so there's always the possibility when you lift it up, it's going to go apart on you, you know. And so I would say to him, don't you think the trash needs taking out?
And this to him was, don't you think you've had enough to drink? See I was always setting my standards on what he should do and it wasn't a free giving relationship, you know. The first year I was in the program, at the end of that year I was so grateful to my sponsor and I loved her so much because she was the first mama that I wanted that I ever had, you know. She was like that mama, that good mama, the one that I thought I had never had and I could go to her and talk to her and tell her things and, you know, today that's still true.
My sponsor knows things that none of my family would ever know about me, you know, because I'm safe when I talk to her, you know, no bad history, that's what's so great there. And I would tell her about this deal with the trash and she says, well if it's his job, let him do it and if it bothers you that bad, then you do it and shut up about it. And don't keep score. She says that's one of the worst things that we do in a relationship is trying to keep score and make everything balance out.
You know, one child may need more attention right now than the other child, that doesn't mean that that child is loved any less, it's just that sometimes they require more attention. And so at the end of that first year I wanted to get my sponsor something that she could really enjoy as a thank you. And so I went to her and I said, what would you really like to have for Christmas? I said, I'd like to get you something that you'd really like to have.
I hate people that try to surprise me who don't know me and give me stuff I would never use in the echoing quarters of time, you know. And at my point in life, I like gifts that use up. I don't have places for, I've got things, and so I have a philosophy in my house, something goes in, something goes out. And so if I like what I have, I don't want something else to have to deal with, but if it's like a candle, it burns up.
If it's like, you know, something to eat, it eats up. You know, it doesn't stay there forever. You don't have to find a place for it, you know, that kind of thing. And so she said, oh, you don't get me anything for being your sponsor, and I said, well, what do you mean? She said, you pass it on. That's how you pay me for what I've done, is I get to see the joy of seeing you grow by passing it on to someone else, you know.
And that is so true. And you know, that very first convention that I went to, it was amazing, because it was a convention by colleagues synonymous, and when my sponsor first said to me, do you want to go to the convention? I said, how can we possibly go to a convention? You know J.D.'s been out of work for over six months, I'm doing all I can to keep things running on my salary alone, and she said that was a yes or no question.
You know, we're just not good at short answers. You know, we can't do yes or no. We have to build a story. And she said, I just asked, would you like to go? She said, I think it would be real good for both of you to be able to go. And I said, well, I don't know how. And she said, well, have you prayed about it? No. Because it wasn't my habit to pray about each and every little item that went down the walk.
I'm sorry, you know. And it wasn't my habit to pray, period. And it took me a long time before I could tell her I didn't even know how to pray. And then she said, well, it's real simple. You can say please in the morning, you can say thank you at night, and that's a start. You know. And so then later she told me, she says, what I do is, she says, I tell God what I'd like to do, and I'd say, God, if that's your will, then show me a way to do it, bless it or block it.
And so I told her, okay. So I went home and I was talking to J.D., and he said, Mel, my sponsor says we need to go too. And he says, but I told him I don't have a job. And I said, yeah, I've been through that. And I said, well, my sponsor said pray about it. I said, you want to pray together? He looked at me and he says, do I have to pray out loud? No, no. So that night before we got in bed, we knelt together by the side of the bed.
We held hands and I said, God, if it be your will, we'd like to go to the convention.
[00:20:00]
Thank you very much. That was it. You know. No big deal. The next morning, my sponsor says, if there's anything, an action that you can take, you take your action, then leave the rest to God. The only action I could take was call and make a reservation at the hotel. So we had a Watt's line at work, and so I called down to Hot Springs and I made the call for the reservation. And then I began to sit there and figure.
And about 30 minutes later, the phone rang, and the man who couldn't get a job for over six months says, guess what, I just got a job. We prayed together. He got a job. The miracle is beginning to happen. And you don't see it on those little small things, but this is all retrospect, you know. And so I began to figure the basic minimum would take to get us to Hot Springs and back. Let's say we had registration for two people and then we had the room.
That was no small thing for Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights. Then you have the gas to go over there and back. And if you eat cheese and crackers for every meal, you know, take your cheese and crackers with you. Well, then you might be able, and this is what we have to have. This is the bare minimum. And so that's what we begin to work toward. And you know, up to that point, like I say, I had been paying partial payments to these places because I couldn't pay because we only had one income, just mine.
And so as time got closer, J.D. mentioned one night, he says, I don't have anything to wear to a convention. Well, neither one of us have ever been to a convention of Alcoholics Anonymous. We don't know what the dress code is. And as you know, there is none. But I mean, we didn't know, and you don't ask. One of the first rules of being sick is never ask. Never let them know you don't know. I don't know why that's real important, but it seemed to be real important at the time.
And so anyway, I told him, I said, well, you certainly can't wear anything you have because J.D.'s clothes look like colanders. And the reason J.D. smoked, and when he drank and smoked, he dropped the ashes, and this was the polyester age, and he was melted. Little holes all over everything, you know. And so I said, well, we certainly can't afford to buy you a new suit because, you know, I only think in terms, you know, like my couch, and, you know, that's before Wally World.
And so anyway, I said, I don't know what we're going to do, and about that time, I got an ad in the mail from a mail order house in Chicago, and they were having to close out on men's suits for $49.95. You got two pairs of pants, reversible vest, and this jacket for $49.95. Can't be much, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, sent off for it. Now the week of the convention, it's on Monday, and we are $35 short, bare minimum.
So it's obvious to me, we're not going to be able to make it. I need to call tomorrow and cancel reservation, but we gave it our best shot. We got to within $35 of what we had to have, bare minimum, to go. And their mailman came, and he brought the suit, and J.D. opens the box up, and I said, well, it wouldn't hurt, even though we can't afford to go, it wouldn't hurt to try it on. And it looks like a nice suit.
I was really surprised. And so J.D. put it on, and he was putting on the second pair of pants, and it was an offset color, and the reversible vest, turned it over, and he says, there's something in the pocket. Just a minute. He says, it's all wadded up. And he reached in, and he came back, and there was a $20, a $10, and a $5. There was our $35. And I looked at him, and he looked at me, and I said, I would never have thought to tell God to put it there.
And we sat there, and we cried. We cried. It's like God went ahead and planned in love, and God honored that, you know. And there was our $35, so we went. And when we got there, somebody invited us out to eat every meal. We didn't have to have cheese and crackers in the room, you know. The fellowship was passing on things that had been done for them, you know. And it would be somebody that you really didn't know that well, say, hey, you know, we'd like to spend some time, visit with y'all, how about joining us for lunch, our treat.
And you know, it saved our little bit of crushed ego we had, but you know, it was an amazing thing. And then it came the night of the banquet on Saturday night, and they were having this real high-powered speaker in from Texas. His name was Jim Williams. And we had heard that he was really, really good. And we wanted to go, but you know, we didn't have that banquet ticket, because that banquet ticket was around $35, and it might as well have been $300, you know.
We didn't have that. But you could watch it. They had it all through the hotel. We took over the whole Arlington Hotel back in those days. And you could see it on closed-circuit TV in your room, or you could go in this other room where they had a big screen, but it's not the same, you know. And we were getting there, ready to eat our cheese and crackers, feeling sorry for ourselves.
[00:25:01]
And there was a knock at the door, and I went over to the door, and there wasn't anybody there. And as I started back across the room, J.D. says, what's that in the floor? And there was an envelope, and there were two banquet tickets in that envelope. And when we went downstairs, you know where our banquet tickets were? We got to sit with the speakers. We got to sit with Jim Williams and John Vicari.
They've all gone on now. But we got to sit there with all of this, and Jim got up, and if y'all ever heard Jim Williams do a tape, you know, he brought Alcoholics Anonymous alive for us. He told everything so funny, that even the most tragic things, you were just sitting there and laughed till you cried. And I thought, oh my God, I love this program. You know, that made it for us. And who did that?
The people who did the Pass It On, who didn't keep score, who were passing it on. And they carried us that weekend, you know, all for fun and for free. And I told J.D., my God, I said, this is a fantastic thing. I want to come to more conventions. We've got to start saving now, putting our money back, and we've been able to do that. And the neat thing is, we've been able to pass on these other little things along, too.
When somebody doesn't have a registration or somebody needs a little help there, you can anonymously do a lot of stuff there to let them know the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon. When I felt obligated, I was out of control. You see, as a receiver, you have no control over what you get, when you get it, how you get it, or whatever. As the giver, which was always comfortable for me, that's because you have control who you give to, what you give to, when you give to, whatever.
It's a totally different thing, you know? And you have to, if there weren't any receivers that could take something and just say, thank you, where would that be with a giver? And there's nothing that irritates me more than to give somebody something they go, oh, you shouldn't have. What you're saying is, you shouldn't have done that because I'm not worthy. I hear what you're saying, but how dare you to tell me who I can give and can't give to?
You take away my joy as the giver, when you discount it as being the receiver. So we had an assignment in my home group one time, we all were going to learn how to accept graciously. So anytime anybody gave you a compliment, you know, and they said, oh, that's a beautiful blouse, this rag got a Kmart blue light special, no, no, no, no, you say, thank you. Thank you is a complete sentence, does not require anything else, you know?
And so we did that, it was funny, it was funny. Because of this, there came a point in my life when somebody said to me, since you do so much writing, and I love to write, I love to pray, and I love to write, and I keep a notebook in my end table there, next to the chair. And I'd write in that and just write things. And that's how all this stuff came to be, by the way, was from those notebooks. And they said, you need a computer.
Well, I had an IBM Selectric typewriter, you know, when I was working, I was a good thief, and I would slowly set up my office at home, my biggest move was when I brought the IBM Selectric in. And, well, it's a big company, you know, they don't need all of those, you know. When I got to the ninth step, we got to pay for that. And, but anyway, I'm thinking, you know, I don't know, I'm probably too old to learn about computers, you know, this probably wouldn't be it.
And I wouldn't even know how to even go about getting one. They were talking about RAM, RAM, RAM, something, I don't know. And it seemed everything had to be IBM compatible, whoopee doo, you know. And I don't know what any of that means. And I said, well, I'll pray about it. And so I decided I'd start a fund. And so on my birthday, and that was in August, and by Christmas, I had $30. So you see, that's back when computers were, you know, $6,000, $7,000.
You can see why I'm going to get one in a hurry here. But I really didn't want it because I didn't know how to use it. But I figured, you know, if everybody kept saying I needed to do it, I might try to look at it, open my mind. And so I went to a party right after the first of the year, and at that party, I noticed they still had their Christmas tree up. Well, not being a judgmental, critical person, I wondered why in the hell the tree wasn't down.
I mean, you know, a day after Christmas, that sucker is gone, you know. And because that's my thing. That's not everybody's thing. And then there was an explanation after dinner that the reason the tree wasn't down was there was a gift still undelivered under the tree. And it was for me. Now, that ought to make you feel a little, oh, I'm sorry. See, I'm so glad that I had learned by that time to keep my mouth shut and not always tell everything the moment it came right through the corridor there.
And it was a keyboard. And I said, hot damn, is this like an Adderperl necklace? You know,
[00:30:03]
I've got, you know, you get one piece now and you get another and another. And the guy said, no, no, I just didn't feel like wrapping it. And he gave me a computer, complete with a color printer. And he said he was upgrading his office and he was an attorney. So I got a first rate. And they had gone in and they had cleaned up the hard drive and everything and they had WordPerfect installed on it. And he said, then there's a girl here that we've invited and she's the head of the WordPerfect division over at Systematics, the computer thing, and she's going to teach you how to use your computer. And Merry Christmas. Wow. Now, you know, my mother said, never take an expensive gift from a man. It obligates you. But I looked at that and I'd been in the program and I said, thank you. Thank you. And thank you was enough. And the man's last name was Grace. So I always said, by God's grace, I got my first computer. You know, and the man was a very sick man. A very sick man. He later shot his wife and killed himself. But there was a time when God used him. You see, we never know when something happens. Those people have had some value. There's something good been going on. You know, you have to remember those things. Well, then later on, you know how it is when you get your, this was an old IBM 386. And then all of a sudden the internet came into being, you know. Well, everybody's going faster, bigger, better, you know. And I'm like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Now, the person who didn't know she could operate a computer, you know how I learned to operate a computer? By doing everything wrong. I got in one day and I saw under files, all these little weird files. And I thought, why are these here? It says balloons. Why in the hell would I need something on balloons? Delete. Do you sure you want to delete? Yes, delete. And then I saw something on something else. And I said, why is that here? And I kept cleaning up my files. And then finally a little message came up and it said, that's it. And I called the girl over at systematics and I said, what happened? She said, well, you gave your program a lobotomy. She, I said, well, all it had was these little zeros and ones. I mean, what the hell, how important that could be? She said, that's, that's the program. And I said, well, who knew? Well, so I had to reload and I'd lost all this stuff, you know, and I, but see, I learned from that what those little things do. So it's real funny. You learn by your, you have an opportunity to learn by your mistakes. I haven't found it necessary to clean those kinds of files up anymore. You know, but anyway, I wanted this other computer. And so I'm praying about it and I'm saying, okay, God, I'm going out and I'm going to look and I'm looking at all these different kinds and who mates and all of the, this, that, and what have you. And by now I'm a little more literate than I was, but I still didn't know. And so finally I said, God, this is the one I'm going to get. And if I'm not supposed to get this one, bless it or block it. Cause this is like Friday and Sunday night. I'm going to do my last prayer on this and Monday morning, I'm going to go out and buy that computer. And so later that evening, I got a telephone call from a guy who said that he was Santa Claus and he had a present for me. And I said, really? He said, yes. He says, I'm from South Dakota. And I said, I thought you were from the North Pole. He said, no, I'm your Santa Claus. And I'm here to tell you that I am building you and putting you together the latest gateway computer on the market with the most up-to-date everything. And I am also sending you a new Hewlett Packard color printer with all the bells and whistles. And I said, really, what kind of, you know, what kind of deal is this?
And he says, and it is from the elves. And I said, and who are the elves? He said, they told me to tell you they prefer to remain anonymous. So I know it must've been some of the people I sponsored or something, but you know, now there's a lot of people said, well, did you not try to find out who that was? And I thought about it. And then I thought, but we have a thing here that says do something good for somebody. And if you get caught, it doesn't count. I did not want that not to count.
So I just thanked everybody I came in contact with. And so I decided that that computer's name was love because it was because of God's grace and now God's love that I was brought into 21st century. And little did I know when I was developing all these computer skills that in the year 2000, I would have to go back to work. And I went to work for an attorney and the word processing program that attorneys use is word perfect. You know, so I was perfectly prepared and knew how to do and operate a program that was going to enable me to become self-supporting again. You know, it's amazing. Okay. We hear a lot of life's not fair. That's right. It's not. Accept it. Now we'll move on. You better be grateful. Grateful life isn't fair because if you add your total
[00:35:06]
life up to the plus and minuses, you get far more than what you've deserved. Trust me. Trust me on that. Okay. Tradition nine, a family or relationship should be pliable in its organization, but our group conscience may appoint certain persons responsible to serve various functions. Now, when you're living together with another person, you need to come up with some guidelines for behavior and things that are acceptable in that home. It never occurred to me to do that in my first marriage. You know, I had this idea of men are supposed to do this. Women are supposed to do that. Well, that was based on being brought up in the forties. It didn't work too well in the seventies. You know, it just, it's not going to work too well because first of all, in the forties, women stayed home. You know, they weren't out there doing all the things they were doing. And the more independent we got, the more bossy we got too, I think. I can speak for me. But an atmosphere of acceptance and freedom are the best to operate on and you've got to be able to get there. So in living together, JD and I came up with our list. Now yours can be different. This is just our list. Number one is God is the head of our house. God is to have an active role in our home and the decisions made for that relationship. We want that to be a place where God lives. And I hope when you come to my house, you will walk in there and you will feel a feeling of love and being a part of and make yourself at home and not worry about, you know, I always look, JD's mother-in-law from his first marriage, he and his brother married sisters. So I was always around the in-laws from his first marriage. And they treated me just like a member of the family. They were never to me any other way. And I think that's sort of remarkable. But anyway, she had a living room that you didn't lose. It was a lookout room, you know, you don't go in there and use that room.
And so we would stand and she even had a little like a little gate, like a dog gate going into the living room and you'd stand and look over the gate. Yeah, it looks real good. How do you like my new couch? God, that is gorgeous. You know, well, we don't have rooms like that in our house. We have rooms that we use and that's her and that is fine and dandy if that's what you want to do. And, you know, I realized one time sort of along that line, I had a set of china that I had gotten overseas years and years back.
And it was a set for 12. And when there's only two people in the house, that's a lifetime supply. You know, you can afford to break a dish or two. It's not going to be a big deal. And I was saving those and I used those only like Thanksgiving, Christmas and maybe a special, special occasion. And I'd get out the good, you know, the good silver, the sterling that you got to polish, that crap, you know, and I'd get all that out and we'd have the big do.
And one day I'm cleaning in my cabinets and I take out those dishes to clean those cabinets and I dropped all 12 plates and broke them. And it was a set that had patterned that had been discontinued now. So I had a worthless set of dishes without any plates, you know. And so I got thinking about that and I had to put them all in the carport sale and sold all. I kept one bowl and one platter just to remind me what it looked like. But I realized there's no more special occasion than every day with the people I love. Why do I only have something I bring out and use like that? It just takes up the cabinet space all year long. And what is more important than being with my family? So when my sister and my husband were all together, I used my dishes. Now I have a set of corral dishes that I use for sandwiches and stuff.
But if I want to fix a nice meal, I bring out my Port Marion and I use it and I bought it one piece at a time. I didn't just go out and buy it like I did all the other, you know, but I bought it one piece at a time. And what I like about it is each piece is different. If you've ever seen the Port Marion, you know, the design and the pattern is different. So and I like that. I like that being a different thing. So those are some of the things, okay. There's no drug or alcohol on our premises. Now some people say, well, we need, we have to entertain a lot and we keep alcohol. That's fine. Like I say, your list will be different. But alcohol causes nothing but problems in our home. And so we don't have it in our home. And we've had people come over and say, do you mind if we bring a beer in? We go, yeah, we do. If you want to drink your beer, you drink it out there. Don't bring it in our home. This is an alcohol-free home, you know. And we don't do drugs in our home. And we don't smoke in our home. That was a rule that we changed after, let's see, 1991. I quit smoking in 85. J.D. quit smoking in 91. And so now we have a smoke-free home because we enjoy that, you know. If you want to smoke, you go outside. We have receptacles outside.
[00:40:01]
But don't stand and hold the door open and try to talk to us on the inside while you're smoking in the doorway. You'd be surprised how some people consider what is outside. Okay, number three, no infidelity. We've both been there, done that. That's not where it's at, you know. We want to not have that problem anymore. Okay, we've had to revise this one several times. Number four, no expenditures over $100 without prior discussion and agreement.
That's because the cost of living got so high. You know, there at one time we had it over $25. My God, you can go to the grocery store, get a loaf of bread, get milk, and you're gone. And this $100 does not apply to the grocery store. That does not mean when you buy your groceries at Walmart, you can add all the other half of the store in there and put it on with the groceries. You know, Walmart is, it's a store that I call it, they never go in a less than $40 store. And have you ever noticed they put the milk all the way at the back end of the other place, you know, so you got to walk through the whole place, see all that other stuff to do that. And they do that for people like me who are impulse buyers who are just loading it up before they get, I may have milk on my list and I'll have 16 items in there before I get to the milk. How does that happen? You know. Okay, no obligations or commitments for each other without prior agreement. This is where he doesn't bring people home for supper without saying in advance, honey, would it be all right to bring somebody home? Because if honey's going to be cooking the meal, if you're going to be cooking the meal, that's fine. But if honey's cooking the meal, then honey needs to have a choice in the matter, you know. And like I say, that was like the deal with the brownies, that was funny, he got to do his own brownies. Okay, personal privacy and quiet time. We each have our individual space. And if I want some quiet time, I simply say, I need some quiet time. That means leave me alone, don't come in here, don't interrupt me, don't give me a lot of questions, decisions, no, I'm not answering the telephone, I'm having quiet time. And I give him that same luxury. And you know, the quiet time is a luxury. That's where you get to sort of refuel yourself. Number seven, we have special our time. That's where our relationship has a commitment, especially. I work, I have all these other obligations. And J.D. made the comment to me one time when I came home from being gone on a speaking trip. And I came back, he said, would you sponsor me? What are you talking about? And he said, well, then maybe I could get some of your undivided attention. And I didn't realize that, that when I came home, and if the phone rang, and it was somebody I sponsored, I would sit there and talk with them, talk with them, and then I'd get off the phone, and J.D. would try, and I'd say, J.D., I need some quiet time.
The phone would ring, and it would be someone I sponsored, and I would pick up that phone, and he says, they seem to have more priority than I do. And you know, that really hurt my feelings when he said that. And what hurt him more was when I realized it was true. And you know, the person that meant the most to me in the world was being shortchanged. While I was being Mother Teresa to the rest of the world, you know. And I, you know, it's like, I'm not that big a deal. Life will go on, whether you can get a hold of me or not. Life will go on.
That's what we have a sponsorship family for. When you can't get your sponsor, call up on your sponsorship list. Call somebody else. Because one person cannot possibly supply all of your needs. It's just, we're just not built that way. So I made a priority, and that's on Tuesday nights after four. This is my time. You don't call me and bother me till at least nine o'clock. By then, J.D.'s in bed, because J.D. gets up and goes to work at four every morning. And so therefore, his time is not interrupted. If we don't want to do anything during that time, but just sit, but we find that it's nice, first of all, turn off television. And that way you get to actually talk. And you get to do eye contact with one another. That's really important, you know.
And we might go out to eat together, or we may just go walking together, or we do something, but we do something where we are together and each other is each other's priority for that period in time. You're giving yourself that. Another thing is common courtesy. We practice common courtesy. When J.D. says something to me and makes a request, he usually calls me little kitten. I don't know why. He knows I hate cats. I wondered one time if it was just a sweet way of saying pussy, but I don't go there. I don't know. And he says, he says, well, he says, most people see you as a tiger. And he says, but I know that inside you're a little kitten, and you're soft and cuddly on the inside. You may appear like a tiger on the outside.
On the Inside, You May Appear Like a Tiger on the Outside, I Said, Nice Save, Anyway,
[00:45:00]
We Say Please and We Say Thank You, We Practice That Courtesy in Our Home, Alright, Number Nine, The Autonomous Action Taken by Each Person Will Be Measured by Its Negative Effect on the Relationship, In Other Words, It's Only When That We Feel Like Something Bad Is Coming Down and Then We Say, I Need to Talk to You About Something and You Don't Go in and Say, You, You Say, I Feel, You Say, I Feel, You As Accusatory and Person Goes on the Fencing, The Minute You Say, Why Did You Do That?
Well, First of All, Why Makes You Mad? You Know Why Makes You Mad? Because Why Implies There's a Difference in the Way that We Think and Yours is Wrong. So Tell Me Where You're Coming From? Because You See, In My Way of Thinking, You Are Out of, So Naturally, You're Going to Be Defensive When Somebody Has Already Said, You're Thinking Cockamamie, Would You Try and Justify That? So See That, I Never Really Thought About That for a Long Time and Years Ago, in 1977, There Was an Article in the Forum Magazine of Al-Anon, There Was an Article about Why, It Says, It Always Implies Criticism, It Points at the Differences Between Us and If We Learn Anything in This Program, It's Look for Sameness, Not for Differences.
You Know, If You Come in Here and You, and It's Like My Sponsor, My Sponsor is a Black Woman, What Would a Black Woman and I Have in Common, You Know? We Have Hearts That Hurt, for Starters, You Know? She Has No Children, I Had No Children, I Didn't Know That, Didn't Know All Those Things Till I Got to Know Her Through Sponsorship, But You See, There Was Something About Her That Attracted Me to Her.
And Having Been Raised in the 50's in Arkansas, I Was a Racist, So She Would Be the Last Person on Earth I Would Have Gone To for Help, But God Can Change Those Things. And By Having Her, and I Told Her How I Felt, and She Said, That Doesn't Matter. We're Only Here Because We're Hearts That Hurt, and a Heart That Hurts Has No Boundaries. You Know? I Found That to be True. Okay, Number 10, No Dredging Up of Past Relationships or Using the Past as a Weapon.
Now I'm Sure None of You Have Ever Done That. You Know, I'll Be Sitting There, Something, and I Say, Ha! She Reminds Me, Back in 1963, and I'll Tell Him, and He'll Look at Me and Go, Wrong Husband. You See, I've Been Married to Him So Long, I Forget That I Was Married Before, and Sometimes I Give Him Credit for Stuff that the First One Did. You Know? All You Can Remember is the Hurt, You Know? But You Gotta Let Go of the Past, and Let the Past Stay in the Past, because No Matter How Many Times You Bring It Forward, You Can't Change the Past.
It's a Done Deal. Give It Up. And Rehashing It Only Brings It Now into the Present, and What It Does, You're Using It for Emphasis, to Prove a Point. If Your Point Can't Stand on Its Own, Forget It. You Don't Have to Use the Past as a Weapon to Keep Banging Them Over the Head with It. Okay, Number 11, Application of the Rules for Healthy Communication as Outlined in The Dilemma of the Alcoholic Marriage.
It's One of the Best Books that Al Non Ever Had. Discuss, Don't Attack. And A Lot of Times When I'm Wanting to Discuss Something, Because I Am Assertive, J.D., When I See Him Start Backing Up, I Know He's Feeling It's an Attack, so I Have to Calm Down, You Know, Calm Down, Discuss, Don't Attack. Talk in a Low Voice. When I am Excited or Mad, I Get Louder. Now My Husband's Got a 65% Hearing Loss, and When I am Louder, It Blurs the Sound that He Hears, and Then There's More Areas for Mistake, but When I Sit Down with Him and Talk to Him in a Normal Voice, He Comes Closer to Being Able to Hear What I Have to Say.
Stick to the Subject. Don't Try to Bring Everything Up that You Can Possibly, You Know, You've Got One Thing You're Wanting to Discuss, and You Say, And That Reminds Me, Now Here's, and Then You, We Call That Gunny-Sacking and Niggy-Sobbing. Now Gunny-Sacking is When You Take All Your Grievances as They Happen, You Don't Deal With Them, You Just Put Them Down in Your Little Gunny-Sack, and You Carry It Along With You, and Then One Day Your Little Sack Won't Hold Anymore, and Something Happens, and Then You Just Take Your Sack and Dump It Over Somebody's Head.
That's Niggy-Sob. It Means, Now I Got You, You Son of a Bitch, and Then You Dump on Them. You Tell Them, You Just Get It in There, You Know, Get It in There. So Sometimes Just for the Fun of It, Sometime When We're Aggravated with One Another, We Go Around the House, Go Gunny-Sack, Niggy-Sob, Gunny-Sack, Niggy-Sob, Just for Fun. Listen to What the Other Person Says. Listen to Their Complaints, You Know, and Don't Listen to Them While You're Trying to Get Rebuttal.
You Know How When Somebody's Speaking, You're Automatically Up in Your Head, and You're Proving Them Wrong, so You've Got Your Next Words to Say the Minute They Shut Up, or Even Interrupt Them and Go from There, You Know, and You Don't Do That. You Listen with an Open Mind. Did You Know that Listening is an Act of Love?
[00:50:03]
It's a Primitive Act of Love in Which You Give Yourself to What the Other Person is Saying, Not Trying to Judge if It's Right or Wrong, Just Listening with an Open Mind to What They Have to Say. Giving Them That Courtesy as another Human Being to Listen to What They Say, and Don't Make Demands. Don't Issue a Bunch of Ultramadams, and How Many Times Have We Been Good at That? If You Do That One More Time, and Then What Do You Do When They Do That One More Time?
If You Do That One More Time, You Don't Have Any Boundaries, and You Keep Going Back and Going Back and Going Back, and They Know That, You Know. So Don't Make Those Demands, and Don't Back Yourself into a Corner by Making an Ultramadam that You Really Don't Want to Go Through, and You're Just, It's an Empty Threat is What It Amounts to. And If You're Not Going, The Thing About It Is, It's Say What You Mean.
Mean What You Say, but Don't Say It Mean. And Sometimes That's Hard. I Can Usually Tell You, Say What I Mean, and I Mean What I Say, but Sometimes I Don't Always Say It Nice, You Know. So That's The Area I Have to Really Work on There. Okay, Don't Try to Work the Other Person's Program or Tell Them How. I Know Nobody Does That but Me. You Know, I Would Come In and I Would Go Through His 24-Hour Book to See Where His Bookmark Was to Determine If He Was Reading It Every Day Like He Should.
A Couple Years Later, He Told Me, He Said, I Read It The Right Day Every Day, but I Put It All Through The Book because I Knew You Were Doing That, and I Just Figured It'd Drive You Crazy. When He Came Through The Front Door, I Would Come Up to Him and I'd Say, How Was Your Day? Sniff Him Out. Fear. Because J.D. Had Had Periods of Sobriety in Between. Sometimes He Could Go Six Months and Then He Would Drink for the Next, You Know, Two Years and Then He Would Be Off.
So It Took Me A Long Time Before The Fear of His Getting Drunk Left Me. And I'd Ask My Sponsor, I'd Say, When Will That Fear of His Getting Drunk Leave Me? And She Said, The More You Don't Focus on It. The More You Focus on It, It's Not Whether He Gets Drunk. You're Getting Drunk Every Time When You Have to Do That. He May Come in the Door Sober, But If You Have to Sniff Him, You're The One That's Not Working the Program.
It's You. Look What You're Doing. You Know, If He Was Drunk As Often As You Are, We'd Have Him Put Away. And That Was The Truth. I Was Crazier and More Neurotic Than J.D. Was By Far. Because When Alcohol Left His Life and He Began to Work the Twelve Steps and Had God Working in His Life, He Was in a Lot Better Shape Than I Was. A Lot Better. And There Came a Period One Day When I Fell Out on My Patio and I Tore My Achilles Tendon.
This Is Not a Fun Thing. And I Drug Myself Back Across My Patio to Get to a Phone to Be Able to Call for Help. And They Took Me to the Hospital and Everything and They Said, You Can't Have Any Weight Whatsoever on That Foot. You Know, Can't Have Any Weight. And They Give You a Pair of Crutches and They Ought to Give Crutch Lessons. If You've Never Been on a Pair of Crutches, You Don't Have a Clue. And So You Think You're Balancing the Weight Under Your Arms.
All You Do Is You Just Really Make Your Underarms Just Extremely Sore. You Bruise Them and What Have You. You Don't Do That. You Do It Through the Arms. Holding On That Crutch and Tightening Those Arms Up Instead of Just Drooping On Your Underarms. And I Had to Learn. And I Was Feeling So Sorry for Myself and I Was Withering in Self-Pity. You See, I Hurt Easy. I Don't Suffer Well. And It Was During That Period of Time, My Mother, And This Was Long Before I Reconciled With Her.
That She Called Me and She Told Me, She Said, I'm Getting Ready to Die. Do Tell. And She Says, I Saw Your Daddy Three Times This Week. Well, See, Daddy's Been Dead Since 1954. Now She's a Little Bat's Gone Crazy on Top of It. And Then There's That Fear Right Behind That, Though, That Says, Oh, God, She's Going to Die. And We Don't. And I Haven't Gotten Okay with Her. And I'll Have to Do. Oh, I Just.
Oh, I Don't Want Her to Die and Have This Feeling Inside of Me. I Don't Want That. So Now I'm Really Feeling Sorry for Me. Because Now She's Over There. She's Going to Die. So The Next Morning, I Get Up and I Decided I've Got to Get Better. I've Got to Have Some Nurture. Now, J.D., Like I Told You, Is Not a Cook. And So He Had Decided He Would Fix Me Breakfast the Morning Before. And He Had Fixed Me an Omelette.
And He Fixed Me a Bacon and Egg Omelette. He Didn't Bother to Cook the Bacon First. Yeah, It Was Bad. Raw Bacon, Just Not Good. I Mean, I Love Hog Lard, But Not That Way. So Anyway, I'm Up There and I'm Going to Make Me Some Homemade Soup.
[00:55:01]
So I'm Martyring. He Really Got Into the Sickness, You Know. You Got to Martyr. I Have to Do It Myself. Nobody Else Cares Enough to Take Care of Me. Everybody Would Call and Say, Do You Need Any Help? No, I Can Handle It. You Know, You Know, You're Not Asking for Help. You Need Help, But You're Not Asking for Help. And So I've Got My Food Processor Out and I'm Fixing All Those Vegetables. You Know, You Got a Food Processor, For God's Sake.
How Long Does It Take? Put Them In. Put Them In. Instead of, Hmm, You Think I'd Have Been Slaving for Three Days Over Cutting Those Vegetables The Way I Was Carrying It Out. And So The Phone Rang. It Was Mother. And She Called to Tell Me Her Symptoms Had Started. You Know, She's On Her Way Out. And I'm Standing There, Leaning on My Crutches, Stirring My Soup with a Phone. And J.D. Comes in the Kitchen, Because He Was Working Nights at That Time.
And He Came In. He Said, Who Are You Talking To? Now One of My Pet Pees Is to Be on the Phone and Somebody Interrupts You to Ask You Who They're Talking To. If It Was for You, You Would Have Gotten the Call. It's None of Your Business Who I'm Talking To. And See, I'm Not in Real Good Shape Now. I've Been Through Self-Pity and Resentment and All This Mess. And He Says, Who Are You Talking To? Now What Would Have Been the Same Thing to Do Here?
Mother, Could Not Do the Same Thing. I Just Glare at Him, You Know, Like, Don't Ask Me Who I'm Talking To. And So in a Few Minutes, He Doesn't Realize that I've Heard Him. So He Comes Over and Like a Little Child on My Sleeve, He'll Be Sad. And I Turned Around as Loud as I Could Yell at Him. I Said, It's None of Your Damn Business. Shut the Hell Up and Leave Me Alone. Just as Horrible as I Could Sound.
And the Next Thing I Knew, I was in the Floor. J.D. Had Put His Foot in My Butt and Had Kicked Me Out from Under My Crutches. I'm Glad You Think It's Funny. Now I am Mad because when I hit that Floor, I went through 3 Instantaneous Feelings. And the First is, I Don't Believe He Did That. Because all During the Years that He was Drinking and Abused in the Physical Abuse, J.D. Never Raised a Hand to Defend Himself.
He Took It as That's What He Deserved, OK? The Second Feeling I Had was, How Could He Do That? I'm on Crutches for God's Sake. How He Could Kick a Wounded Animal? I Don't Know. And the Third Was, I'll Kill That Son of a Bitch for Everything I Do. I Went Right Back to Where I Had Come From. Right Back into Those Feelings. And I Picked Up My Crutches and They Were Those Oak Crutches You Used to Get. And I Broke My Crutches Trying to Hit Him with Them.
And He Would Stand Right Out of Range and Laugh. Which Made It Worse. You See, My Ego Hit the Floor that Morning. And I Will Fight to the Death to Defend That. And So I Said Something to Him that Was Very, Very Mean and Cruel. I Threw His Disease in His Face that Morning. And I Told Him, You Know, You're Really, Really a Real Good Member of Alcoholics Anonymous, Aren't You? I Said, Why Don't You Go Out and Get Drunk?
You Deserve It. Isn't that a kind thing from a woman who would give anything not to have her husband drink? And See, That's That Thing, You Hurt Me, I Hurt You Back. And He Just Turned Around and I Said, Would You Hand Me the Phone? And He Handed Me the Phone. I Said, I Need to Call My Sponsor. I'm Real Sick. I Realized That. When I Heard Those Words Come Out of My Mouth, I Realized How Sick I Was.
He Turned Around and He Walked on Out the Door and He Didn't Come Back. And I Told My Sponsor What I Had Done. She Said, You Didn't, You Didn't, You Didn't. And I Said, Yeah, I Did. And When I Told Her What He Did, She Said, Good for J.D. I Said, You Think It's Good that He, She Said, You've Had That Coming for a Long Time. And So J.D. Came Home the Next Day and He Said, I Want to Talk to You. He Said, I Shouldn't Have Kicked You.
And He Said, But You Know, I'm a Sober Member of Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm Doing the Best I Can. And I Decided I'm Going to Make it With You or Without You. Now, You're Going to Have to Pull Your Own Deal Here. And I'm, I Don't Deserve to be Treated and Talked to Like That Ever Again. And I Told Him, You're Right, You're Right. You Know, It Took That for Me to See What My Part Was. And I Was Going to Have to Pull My Own and Still Riding on His Coattails of Him Being an AA.
I Talked to a Lot of Al-Anon's. They, They Go to Al-Anon because There's Some Place to Go While Daddy's in AA Meeting. But You Know, If You Want to Get Better, You're Going to Have to Pull Your Own Weight Here. And it's up to you to do your thing. Okay, number 13, after God, our personal recovery comes first before our partners.
[01:00:00]
And I'll tell him, if I'm in a bad place, I'll say, JD, I'm in a really bad place right now. I'm having a real struggle and I just don't have much to contribute right now. And, you know, he'll do the same. And then that way, you know, it's not somebody zipping over the other one all the time. Then we got to get rid of the untouchables. Now, the untouchables, don't you have things that every time they come up, you all have a fight about them?
It's sort of like you're in the ring and you hit the bell and you all go out and fight a while. And then they hit the bell and you go back to your corners and you wait and you regroup. Because every time you talk about it, nothing's ever resolved. You both get hurt feelings and you just say, well, we can't talk about this. Well, we had a lot of those untouchable areas. And I said, you know, I don't want those between us anymore.
How are we going to resolve that? So what we decided to do was when one of those areas came up, we would get together and we would set chairs where we were touching knee to knee, looking straight at each other and holding hands and we would sit there and talk until we talked it through. Not saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then walking off. No, we're going to sit here and we're going to talk it. And sometimes those talks were like an hour long or more.
And they were usually about things that really wasn't so much us, but it's like his family, my family. When he would bring up something about his family, I would go ballistic or I'd bring up something about mine, he'd go ballistic, those kind of things. And we got to where we could walk through those things. And so we don't have those things between us now. Honesty and trust must be observed. I can't worry if he's lying to me or not, you know.
Trust is a thing that is hard to come by and it can go in a heartbeat, you know. When they come in and you hear a lie and you know it's a lie and if they'll lie about that and that's so small, why wouldn't they lie about something else, you know. It makes anything they say from that point on suspect. And it works the same way from either side. We'll try to work together as a team as much as possible because, see, the water garden taught us that if we work together as a team, we can overcome a lot of stuff.
So we've started doing things together. You know, we built a computer hutch complete with doors and cabinets and a place for the printer and all like that. I wouldn't have thought it would ever be possible. It came in two boxes. It had two books of directions. We never could do anything together like that because I'm the foreman, you know. And it was when I sat down and quit being the foreman and laid the directions out and I'd read the directions and then we would try to find the pieces and work it together.
And before as the foreman, I would just yell out directions. And here, find that piece. See that one over there? Get this one over here and you put it together. How hard can that be? Well, it was evidently harder than I could put together because you didn't see me down there doing it, you know. And then later we put a big entertainment center thing together, you know. The only thing about the entertainment center is when we got it finished, we couldn't lift it.
It was laying down in the floor, you know, and the two of us could not lift it. It was so heavy, we could not lift it to get it turned up and put against the wall. We had to call neighbors in for reinforcements to get our major project against the wall. And I said, see, it works. And then like say we have made joint decisions regarding changes in the home or yard on the guidelines list, that came too after the water garden, you know.
And then we have that little list of things that we do in the day-to-day doings around the house, you know. Like who does this? And you know the thing about that, over the years, in the beginning we really kept to those lists. And over the years it became sort of a, this is what needs to be done for our home. And whoever sees it and wants to take care of it, they take care of it. And there is no score keeping about that.
There is no more of that. You know, if I see that the garbage needs to go out, I can put the garbage out. It is not a big deal. It used to be a big deal. And when you are working together as a team for the greater good of the relationship and how your home is to be, that is not such a big deal anymore. That evolved over the years. That was one thing. J.D. is a pack rat. By nature, I miss organization, by nature.
I can't stand things cluttered. I can't do clutter. There is method to my madness, you know. Each thing has a place and needs to be in its place. I can't go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink. That just can't happen because I can't get up and face the kitchen sink with dirty dishes in it, you know. And so what I do is I put those things away at night. I don't ask him to do them for me. But you know, the thing about it is, over the years, him living in organization, he is now beginning to become more organized.
That is why I am scary sometimes. You know, he asks me, he says, can I have a thing for my closet? He said, sort of like you have for years so I can put stuff in it. You would like that. You see, it used to, I would go in his closet and I would fix it and arrange it properly, you know, all the shirts of the same color together and all this kind. You know, all these little things just the way they are supposed to be.
And then he would be irritated. And, you know, he doesn't do his closet properly. You know, all the hangers are not going in the same direction.
[01:05:02]
That is very important. Do you know why that is important? In case of a fire, if you want to get your clothes out of that closet, if one hanger is going this way and one hanger is going that way, they won't come off. But if they are all going the same way with one full swoop, you can empty your closet in one motion. We have done it before on tornado drills. When you need to get in a closet, you can empty that sucker in a hurry.
But you can't if they are all like this, you know. The tornado comes and you are still sorting clothes, you know. That is not going to work, you know. Well, like I say, J.D. hates to part with things. Everything is sentimental. He is a pack rat, you know. And, see, after Mama died, it took Dorothy and I months to go through Mother's stuff. Because Mother never threw away anything from the kind of life she lived.
And then the Depression coming along and her losing a bunch of stuff during the Depression, Mother was not going to part with anything. So, rubber bands around your newspaper. There may be a shortage of those at some point in time. So Mama would put them and she made a ball out of them. And we had actual rubber balls. Because over a period of time and heat, they just melt together. So you have actual rubber balls made out of rubber bands.
It is amazing. Every little butter dish known to man that your butter comes in. When we had the little plastic milk cartons. We had all the plastic milk cartons. We had all the plastic milk jugs. Mama had a triple car garage full of fruit jars and these little butter dishes. I mean, it is unbelievable. We filled, we went to the recycling places with them, where they had them on the shopping center.
One day I filled the recycling center bin with glass. And that is breaking the darn things. I would throw them in and break them as I went. Because I knew we would never catch it all together, you know. Because Mama had, that means she had every fruit jar known to man. Every vinegar bottle, every ketchup bottle that she had ever had. It was all out there. I do not know why we are saving these things, but they were all out there.
And I said, my God in heaven, how much stuff do I have in my home that is totally unnecessary that I am doing like this? And I found there were things that were there. Not anywhere near that magnitude, because I always hated that. But I was doing the same thing with certain things, you know. It is like, my sister, she is a hoarder of clothing, you know. Forty-five split skirts. Now how many split skirts can you use?
Forty-five. Forty-five. Is this person's sponsor here? You have got work. You know, and I said, how many, you know, it is like when my mama died, there were drawers full of panties and slips and still in the original packages. You do not use them until you wear the others completely out. And her being a dressmaker, she would patch them. Patch them. When she had brand new stuff in the drawer. And I said, I just do not get that, you know.
But we had to reach a performance standard in our household with the Pack Raton organization, you know. And I said, JD, all I am asking is our common areas be not cluttered. You can do anything you want in that closet of yours. You can do what you want in those buildings out, you know. You can have half of the patio and you can do what you want to with it. But I have got to have some place where I feel comfortable.
And I cannot do it with all that garbage around, you know. And now he does not even do that clutter thing anymore. You know, he is enjoying it more and more. It has been nice. I think we may be getting balanced somehow or another. Tradition ten. A relationship should avoid heated controversy. No one wins in a heated controversy. If you lose, you both get hurt. And as a result, the relationship is going to suffer.
It is hard to get over these things. And power driven anger, resentment, close mindedness, revenge, violence, all can be part of a heated controversy. They start little and build quick, you know. Little bitty things. When I got married the first time, the minister said, do not go to bed mad. I would never have gotten to bed. It would never have happened, you know. I went on a fishing trip with my mother and JD.
One time. Because I know how my mother fishes. Daddy and I would go fishing all the time. Daddy let me fish. If I wanted to play in the water, I played in the water. If I wanted to fish, I fished. With mother, fishing is a job. Everything was a job with her. She had performance standards. She catches the first fish, the biggest fish, and the most fish. Other than that, you can fish. So I know it's nothing.
See, JD, he's one of these. He gets along with my mother. You know why? He never argues with her. I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that. Not at that time in my life. And so mama kept saying, you used to go fishing all the time.
[01:10:00]
And I'm thinking, not with you, not with you. And so anyway, they finally convinced me that I needed to go. And against my better judgment. See, every time you go against your better judgment, you're putting yourself up for it now. It's your fault. Well, first thing off, they want to go catch fish. And they want to get up early in the morning. I'm not a morning person. Fish can eat at noon like anybody else.
And they want it to be down on the lake by 5.30. Yeah. Scary, isn't it? You know what's on the lake at 5.30 in the morning? Mosquitoes. And what are you wearing? Shorts. Because it's going to get hot down there on the lake. And I get down there and we load the boat. And mama says to me, why don't you run the motor? That used to be my job when I was a kid. And I said, I don't want to. Well, I don't care what you want.
Get back there and run the motor. I'm not running the motor. Yes, you are. Hide and watch. I'm sitting there on the middle seat. J.D. says, I'll run. My mama says, shut down. And J.D. looks at me and I said, whatever. And so we're just sitting there at the boat dock. We ain't moving anywhere. And mama says, get back there in the back end. And J.D. says, Mother Hines, I'll be glad to get back there in the back end.
Well, go ahead. She just is being hateful. I didn't feel like running the motor. I'm sleepy. Mosquitoes are chewing. I need to be doing this. I don't need to be running the motor. And so we're sitting down. They're trying to figure out where we're going. You know, God forbid anybody should follow you to your spot. Like you own the world's water. So we get there. And so I'm looking around. I'm just yawning and looking at the sun coming up and enjoying the lake and the quietness.
And mama says, get your pole over here. I will, I will. And then she told me how long my line should be and what kind of weight I needed to put on. Like I had never been fishing before in my life, you know. And she said, in a few minutes she looks over there and she says, now I want you to fish over there, that third twig to the left. And I'm looking at third twig to the left and there's a little buck bush sticking out over there.
And I know that when I swing my line in there that that line's going to go wing, wing, wing, wing, wing around that bush. And my bait's going to be hanging up in the air and I'm going to have to then tear the whole bush out to get my line back. So I know what's on the side. I want to fish there. I said, I don't think I can do that, mama. She said, oh yes you can. I said, I don't want to. And she said, well do it.
And I said, I don't want to do it. She said, do that third fish to the left. Alright, alright. And I look at her and she said, well what did you do that for? And I said, seemed like a thing to do at the time. Like I did it on purpose. You know? And so I'm pulling on my line and I'm pulling on my line and I just chunked down on that thing and it broke the line. Mama says, now. And I said, yeah, I get to rebait my hook.
Y'all just go ahead and fish. I can screw around over here 30 minutes, and so mama continues on. And since I wasn't fishing, I was in charge of anchor. And mama had these big three pound coffee cans filled with lead that were anchors. And so she would tell you, okay, now you pick the anchor up and then gently take it across here and don't drop it. And don't bang it against the side of the boat. You'll scare the fish away.
And then you're like, don't drop it down in the bottom And then when it would come time to lift the anchor she'd be content with the anchor five minutes and you've got to lift the anchor and you've got to reverse this process and she's got to tell you, all day long. Every time we had the raising and lowering of the anchor, mama had the instructions. I want to hit her with the anchor. And finally I said, I've had enough.
And she said, what? And I said, I'm ready to go home. It's in the afternoon. I've suffered this all day long. I am sick and tired of suffering it. I am through. We are leaving. J.D., get up. I'll run the motor now. I am leaving. And mama said, well, I'm not ready. I said, oh, yes you are. And mama said, there's still fish here and I took my pole and I beat the water. And I said, I'm not ready. So I get back there and I crank that motor and off we go, and Mama is so mad and her line is just pulling, she's just, you know, she's just not wanting that at all.
[01:15:04]
She's sitting on the front end of the boat. Well, if you've ever run the motor in the back end of the boat, you know you can't hear. But there's, in this lake, there are other sunken trees and stobs and stuff, and so Mother sits on the front and she guides you, so she's going like this. So I go that way and I hit one of those stumps and she heard the pin on the motor, and she goes, why did you go there?
I said, you were giving it this, it said go there, and she said, I was telling JD I got a great big one over there last time. And I said, ah, that's it. I dove out of the boat and I swam to shore, I said, y'all can have it. So they had to paddle all the way back, and I was out and I was walking down the road going toward home, and I was picking them up and putting them down, and I was making some noise because I'm mad.
And so JD said, Mama says, there's my baby, we've got to stop and pick her up. He said, Miss Ainge, y'all just let her walk, really. Y'all let her walk, she's mad, you know, and she can walk it off, y'all just, no, I don't know why she's like that. So they stopped, and so she told me to get in the car, so I got in the car, and she turned to me and she said, why can't you just enjoy a nice day fishing?
And I made myself a promise that day, I will never do this again. And I didn't. You know, I said that wasn't, to go when you knew what it was going to be a disaster, that is crazy to put yourself in that kind of position, it wasn't, Mama was being Mama. And I knew I could not be in that close contact with her, I knew how it was the last time we went fishing, she was playing with snakes in the boat, I just, just couldn't do it, just couldn't do it.
And you know, revenge was a way of life for me as far back as I knew. So when you made me mad, and if you hurt my feelings, it made me mad and therefore I got even with you. And whatever you do to me, I get to do back to you as many times as I want to. That's the rule of revenge. And I didn't see there was anything wrong with that. Now, J.D. decided at one point that he wanted that sports car more than life itself.
So he got this little red MG Midget. Now look at me, look at the little MG Midget, you know, smallest car known to man, it's the kind like they use in the circus where 15 people come out of it and you go, how can that be? You know, because it's not a car that I get in and out of, it's a car I put on and take off. And so he had this big GMC that nobody wanted and he had his little red sports car and so I'm looking at that sports car and I had told him the night before that I needed the truck the next day because my girlfriend and I were going to go buy groceries.
Now my girlfriend weighed around 300 pounds and I weighed about 250. And so we were going to get groceries. Now for me to get in and out of the sports car was traumatic because it's one of those things you have to learn how to get in and out of and if you turn sideways and fall in, that's about the best you're going to get because when you're tall, you don't bend and this is the days that the bouffant hair does, you know, and you get in and then your hair is in the back seat no matter how you go about that.
And then you try to get out and my feet get hung in the steering wheel and I end up crawling out. There's just not a graceful way to get in and out of one of those little dinky cars when you're a big woman in a little car, it's just not going to happen. And I looked out there that morning and there sat the MG and I said, how dare he do that when I asked him specifically to leave me the truck. Well, he's not going to ruin my day.
And this is long before the program and I got in that little car and it's winter time, I got on my coat, I fell in, got myself turned around and I'm going through the gears and I'm going in and as I'm going down the street to my girlfriend's house, she's standing on the front porch and she's going, hmm, hmm, hmm. And I said, what's the matter with you? She said, I can't do that. I said, yes you can and you will.
I said, we'll not let him do this to us, this is our day to go grocery shopping and looking about and having fun, this is our day and we are going to have our day.