Mad Dog 20/20

If you are old enough to know what Mad Dog 20/20 is, you know it can kill ya.  I should have died a couple of times.  Because I didn’t learn the first time, I am pretty sure I asked God to take me the second time.  He didn’t.  I had a lesson to learn.  Actually, I had several to learn, and not just about the effects of alcohol.  Well, the big ones definitely involved alcohol.  I do know I stopped drinking MD 20/20.  I switched to other equally intoxicating elixirs of one sort or another.  Many more years of throwing ‘em back, and prayers followed.  

These days I am hardly a drinking woman.  But I am mad.  About nothing in-particular, just if it involves people.  I feel like I should join a boxing team.  I quit smoking almost seven years ago to be healthier for my grandchildren.  When I think back – this is when the madness began (that I am aware of).  Something about not smoking caused a knee jerk reaction for going into immediate menopause, which then snowballed into not having a taste for alcohol, which led to snippy snappy, eye rolling, bite your head off, tough crap stuff.  And crying.  Well maybe it’s not that bad.  It’s just a crap shoot.  

I wonder if there is a way to go back to drinking and smoking.  Is that the cure for madness?  People that drink seem really happy.  The world seems to roll off their shoulders.  They are always gathering and celebrating something.  The risk of drinking alcohol, along with the idea of praying for my life on the bathroom floor just doesn’t appeal to me these days.  Smoking is not such a concern, as I can hardly fathom the thought of a cigarette in my mouth.  

I thought it might be a good idea to seek professional help for this madness, but I lost my job which means no more insurance, so that settles that idea.  I have a friend whom I normally talk lifes’ crazy junk with, but now she’s mad too.  Throw that idea out the window.  See what I mean – it’s maddening.  I can totally relate to Maxine the comic.  

The way I see it; my vision being 20/20 with glasses on; all this madness is just a phase.  To be on the safe side though, I am going to check into a rabies shot.

Skipping Stones

Not sure who came up with the saying ‘roll with the flow’, but I am guessing it is part of the instruction manual you get with a canoe.  And, as we know, canoeing is perfectly fun and games until someone tips the canoe.   I have gone canoeing three times in my life.  

Another saying; ‘three times the charm’ is a lie and I am letting you know this ahead of time in case you hadn’t heard it before.  The first time I went canoeing with a husband and my daughter.  She was eight at the time, and eight year old girls would rather die than live through the embarrassment of their parents.  Except me, I was never embarrassed by my parents until I was well into my forties, but that is an entirely different subject.  So, back to my first canoe trip, it was twenty three years ago, and we were tagging along with a brothers’ annual work event.  

I was not too excited about the idea of a canoe trip, but I wanted to roll with the flow – so that is what you do.  You go along with everybody else.  If I knew ahead of time my husband was not a canoe guy, I would NOT have went along.  But for the sake of looking good, and rolling with the flow, I went.  And though we never tipped over, which was my biggest fear, we missed our ‘get off here to catch your bus ride back’ stop.  Yep, that was us.  And about one mile down river, it dawned on us.  Rather than get off at the next stop point, we panicked and jumped out of the canoe and proceeded with the upstream battle of pulling the canoe on foot, for over a mile, in the muck and slippery rocks to the stop point we originally missed.  My daughter laid down flat in the canoe – she was mortified by us.  And of course, we were mortified too. 

Canoe trip number two was with the other husband.  He knew how afraid I was of tipping over in a moving river.  He was privy to the first canoe trip fiasco and promised to take good care of me if I went on the trip with his family.  So of course I believed him.  He really thought my story was funny so he shared it, and was then talked into pulling the funny prank of tipping me over on purpose.  And he did.  I lost my glasses in the river, had a panic attack, found my bent up glasses, and got mad and cried.  Here, here for rolling with the flow.  

This brings me to canoe trip number three with my boyfriend at the time.  We went with our card club.  Simply put, he is good at navigating any type of watercraft.  So I trusted him, completely.  We never tipped.  Though a bit short on charm along with sun burnt thighs, it was a successful roll with the flow day.

As I walked the shoreline of a Lake Michigan beach recently I found several flat pieces of stone that had washed to shore.  I thought about how they got their shape after being tossed around in the water, perhaps for years, grinding with the sand and other rocks; floating and tossing about, then washing up to shore. The flat rocks nestled into the beach shore are almost like an invitation to be picked up and tossed back in.  So I tossed a few, and as I watched them dance across the water before making the plunge back in, I realized how I am more of a ‘skipping stone’ than a ‘go with the flow’ person.  .   

The circumstances and experiences in our lives are what shape us into who we are, much like the water and sand shape the stones.  Always uniquely and beautifully shaped, dancing across the water, plunging in, and rolling in with the surf to greet our new opportunities, learning what works for us, and what doesn't, never apologizing for who we are, but just being.