The Right Kind of Ridiculous

Blondie hugged me at 3:00 a.m.  She had been on China time for three weeks. To her it seemed like 3:00 in the afternoon.

“You’re ridiculous!” she said with a smile.

“I wanted to make sure you were OK.”

“My flight leaves in three hours.  I think I could handle being in the airport by myself that long.”

She was right of course. I was being ridiculous, going overboard being protective.  I wondered if that was such a bad thing.

Thirty years earlier I’d met a guy in AA who went around with just a dime in his pocket. There were no cell phones back then. He kept the dime in case he needed to make a call from a pay phone.

Even after a decade sober, he didn’t want to have money to drink. He said he thought he was being ridiculously cautious, but why take chances?

Later I watched Blondie’s plane take off, glad I’d been there to make sure she’d made her connection. I thought of my friend who’d died serene and sober, probably with that dime still in his pocket.  Sometimes being a little ridiculous was a good thing.

Today I will be the right kind of ridiculous.

Dogged Determination ©2018 & 2019 by Ken Montrose

Dogged Determination 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 https://www.pinterest.com/kenmontrose/mt-rose/