21. Pebbles in my Shoe

Austin said, “With all the time you’ve been sober, you must have cleared away all the resentments and misunderstandings and bullshit from your head.”

I laughed. “No, I haven’t.  When I talk about recovery with you guys, I’m presenting the ideal.  Nobody lives up to the ideal.  I may have cleared away some of the boulders of my resentment, but there’s a pebble or two in my shoe.”

“Like what? Got an example?”

“In second grade, Miss Fry gave us a sheet of paper with three rows of three dots. We had to connect the dots with four straight lines.  I was the only one to figure it out.  She gathered all our papers, looked them over, and with this smug smile said, ‘Nobody got it right!’ I ran to her desk, looking for my paper. She yelled at me.  I found my paper anyway, held it up and said ‘see!’ showing her and the girls in the front. She snatched the paper away, pointed to one of my lines, said, ‘It bends.’  Now it did bend slightly.  But I knew I had solved the problem and she couldn’t admit it.  Instead of basking in a moment of second-grade triumph, I got shoved into a corner and threatened with a paddle. It still bugs me.”

 “Whoa Ken, how long ago was that?” Austin said, laughing and snorting.

“We’re coming up on the 50^th anniversary,” I said. Maybe it is time to let it go, shake that pebble loose.”

Today I will get a pebble out of my shoe.

Time for a Change ©2017 by Ken Montrose

Time for a Change is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and anyone you might know is purely coincidental.

Other works by Ken Montrose are available at: www.greenbriartraining.com