Never a Drink

27 March 2012

Dear Cassi,

       

In the annuals of middle school teachers with mental issue exists a woman I will call Bigriver. I will call her this because her last name was the same as a large river. Bigriver was the teacher that instilled in her students the skewed moral values one would find in a G rated children’s film.

       

The speech Bigriver gave with the most pride was the one where she explained to all of her students that she had never had a drink of alcohol, other than in medicine, in her life.

       

I do recall Alan’s response to this as being a dirtier version of: ‘if you’ve never stuck your finger in your tailpipe maybe it never itched.’ In other words, who cares what you have left undone?

       

Grant you that I have never been one for the spirits. Alan’s drinking put a bad taste in my mouth for that sort of thing. However, Alan was the kind of person who drank enough to put his life in jeopardy. That means he has a problem. Bigriver thought that if you had one drink a day then you were an alcoholic.

       

This kind of all or nothing thinking leads to a system fail soon or later. Turtle Nose was a fellow who would take no drink for much of his life but when he lost his faith he became a roaring drunk.

       

Bigriver was the kind of person who never gave up on those worm fuzzy ideas that lived in Saturday morning cartoons. She was the kind of person who never grew up trying to get all of us to stay children forever. She failed

Stay safe, little sister

Richard Leland Neal