Tonight I can be grateful for having learned to appreciate
challenges.  On top of everything else I’ve faced today, if I
hated being pushed to my limits I’d really be hurting.
THE BROKEN SHOVEL STORY, Part 3:

It was a Craftsman, with the lifetime guarantee printed on the
fiberglas handle.  I paid a bit more for it than a comparable
grain scoop would have cost, for that reason.  Sears has given me
a few new screwdrivers and wrenches over the years.  They don’t
make their tools any better than, say, Stanley or Snap-On, but they get
away with charging a lot for them because of that guarantee.  I’m
sure that some of their customers will just toss out a broken one
rather than return it.  Not in this family.  When I bought
that shovel, I didn’t expect it to last out my lifetime.  I had a feeling that I’d be getting a free one some day
from Sears.  See how wrong I can be.

The first parts of the story have been posted within the past week and
a half and can be found if anyone needs to be brought up to
speed.  After I wrote here that I had let someone give me a “gift card”
refund for a bit more than half what I recall having paid for the
scoop, LuckyStars
sweetly shamed me into standing up to Sears and making them stand
behind their guarantee.  I went to the Craftsman website and left
a message on the customer service contact form.  Someone from
Sears phoned me and got my story and said she’d “build a case” and get
back to me.  Yesterday someone else called and told me to go to
the local store and see a manager named Larry and he would give me
another gift card, for $15.00.  I’m giving you the condensed
version here.  Bear in mind that what follows actually was longer
and more involved, but I’m including all relevant details.

When I got to Sears. Larry wasn’t there but Mary in the office said he
would be closing the store tonight and should be back… now, soon,
uhhh…. and she paged him, then phoned his home and left a message on
his machine, then stared at me a while and finally asked me what I
needed to see Larry about.  I ran through the story for her and
she asked me my phone number and checked her computer and found the
record of my gift card “refund” last week, but nothing further. 
For some reason, she seemed rather desperate to deal with me.  She
asked several of the employees who passed through the hub office if
they knew where Larry was and when he’d be back.

One of those employees was someone I recognized from AA and NA
meetings.  Since he’s anonymous, and his name sorta rhymes with
Evil, I’ll call him Evil.  I was not unwilling to allow Mary to
facilitate my refund so I could depart, but Mary wasn’t quite sure how
to go about it, since the figure of $15 that I’d been promised by Sears
Central was arbitrary, a compromise settlement, I suppose, to make up
for my having been short-changed originally, and to compensate me for
my time and inconvenience in going in there twice.  She dithered
and fussed and tapped at her keyboard and frowned and, I think,
farted.  Someone did.  Then Evil jumped in, asked what was up
and when Mary explained the situation he went to a different keyboard,
took my original refund card and generated a new “gift card” for me
that was worth $4.50 more than the original one had been.  I
accepted it when he handed it to me, turned to Mary and said, “I’m
down, here, not up.  The amount I was told that Larry would give
me was FIFTEEN dollars, not four-and-a-half.”

Mary explained that the price check in their system said that covered
the price of the scoop and it was all she was able to give me.  I
replied that I understood that and I supposed that Larry would probably
be able to do it, being the manager and all.  She said that even
if he was there, she’d have to do the thing because Larry is new there
and doesn’t know the system.  I believed her.  I could tell
that regardless of what her job title was, Mary was the one who ran the
place.  Still, I had been told to see Larry and get $15, and I
couldn’t face LuckyStars if I let Mary blow me off with $4.50, could I?

I was leaning on the counter, content to wait for Larry, since he would
be back… sometime soon, I supposed.  This would not do for
Mary.  Maybe she needed some solitude to pick her nose or fart or
something, but she was obviously unwilling to leave me standing
there.  She said it “wasn’t necessary” for me to stand around and
wait, and I could call her or she’d give me a call….  That’s
when I cut in and said I would rather wait and get it taken care of
because I live fifty miles away.  AND that’s when Evil cut in and
said, “It’s not any FIFTY MILES out there.”

Now it’s time for a little explanation, some background.  I have
come a long way in my spiritual growth and emotional progress. I used
to lie a lot.  I lived a lie for a long time.  Then I stopped
lying.  It’s not something I’m proud of any more than a guy would
have reason to be proud if he stopped beating his wife.  I’m glad
I stopped lying, but that I had to STOP isn’t something to be proud of,
for me.  That I don’t lie is important, important enough to keep
me careful about what I say.  I am so careful that I avoid even
giving evasive answers to invasive questions.  I frequently risk
the displeasure of others by telling them that something is my business
or that I see no need to tell them.   I also frequently
fumble for just the right words to avoid being misconstrued.  Not
that it does much good, most of the time.

 I used to be sensitive, defensive, touchy, with a hair-trigger
temper and very “thin skin” when it came to insult or hurt
feelings.  I had tons of hot buttons.  Now they are down to
just two… maybe three if you count my tendency to act like a mama
bear if anyone messes with my kid.  I have a “warm” button, an
orange one, that sets me off, makes me mildly upset if someone lies to
me.  And I have a red HOT button that sets me off like mad when
someone calls me a liar.  The thing is, I don’t lie.  This
little quirk I’ve developed since having my life turned around thirty
some years ago has cost me a lot. Living an honest life in this culture
is hard.  If you don’t tell little polite white lies and parrot
the politically correct terms, if you don’t turn away from the truth
but get in people’s face with the facts, sometimes there is hell to
pay.  I’ve paid it and considered it worth it for the self-esteem
it earned me.  I unreasonably and unreasoningly expect recognition
for it.  When any fool is imperceptive enough to doubt my veracity
and unwise enough to say so to my face, I sorta react.

Now this man Evil didn’t actually say that to my face.  He had
turned away and was walking out the door as he said it (the
coward).  I said, “What did you mean by that?”  Then, after
punching my red hot impugning-my-honesty button, he went on and hit the
warm orange bullshitting-me button.  He said, “I didn’t say
anything.”  Mary was still talking to me and I was still waiting
for Larry and the door Evil went through was marked “Employees Only”,
or I might have followed him and followed up on his remarks.

Poor Mary kept asking various people where Larry was and explaining to
various others what the problem was.  Then, the young man who had
shorted me in the first place, and had the honesty at the time to look
guilty about it, showed up.  He had the good grace today to try
and make it right.  He and Mary started a long involved discussion
of how they might give me the fifteen dollars I didn’t seem inclined to
leave without, without calling down upon themseslves the wrath of the
“asset protection” department, their auditors I suppose.  The guy
came up with a scheme, and they credited me for for the first gift card
I had turned in to get the new one that was worth $4.50 more, and then
credited me for returning (again) the same shovel I had returned the
other time.

Meanwhile, Evil came through the office again on his way out and I left
Mary and the boy tapping their keyboards ripping off Sears for my
fifteen dollars, and followed Evil into the hall, asking him what made
him think I didn’t live fifty miles away.  He never even paused in
his stride, but walked on insisting in a snide tone of voice that he’d
not said anything of the sort.  Then he went out the door and I
went back and got my new gift card which Mary and the kid told me is
worth $35.00.  If it isn’t, c’est la vie.  I think I had
$35.00 worth of entertainment watching them figure out how to
circumvent Asset Protection.

Sears was my last stop on a busy round of errands before returning to
Greyfox’s stand to pick him up for the meeting.  He wouldn’t be
closing up for another hour or so.   I briefly considered making
the 5:30 AA meeting because I knew Evil usually catches that one and I
wanted to confront him again and try to find out where the bullshit was
coming from.  That would have made it impossible to cross town,
get Greyfox, and get to the NA meeting on time by 7:00, so I decided to
let it go.  On the way across town it occurred to me that Evil
might think I live with Greyfox there on the edge of Wasilla.  He
sees us together, and presumably everyone knows we’re married. 
But also it is widely known that I live up here and that I drive 50
miles for meetings and to drive the rehab van every other
Thursday.  That fifty-mile drive has occasioned much comment,
especially from the rehab residents who think it’s just great I go so
far out of my way to take them out for a drive.   I took some
deep breaths, laughed at myself for getting so het up, and resolved to
ask Greyfox to set Evil straight.

I did ask him to do that next time he saw Evil, as we were getting out
of the car for the NA meeting.  Then, a few minutes later, as he
was standing by the coffee machine when Evil walked into the meeting
room, I tapped Greyfox on the shoulder and asked him to explain to the
guy that I don’t live with him.  He did, and the asshole tried for
a few moments to deny that he’d even said anything to me.  But I
calmly and firmly said, “Bullshit,” right to his face, with full eye
contact.  If you’ve never tried that, you might be surprised how
effective it is.  He looked away, and then he turned away, and
just as he had before, on his way out he said nastily, “You don’t have
to drive any fifty miles to go to Sears.”  Yeah, well, it’s more
like 57, out there, because Sears is on the other end of Wasilla, but
the point is this Evil fellow didn’t believe Greyfox or me.  It
was one of those, “My mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with facts,”
situations.

On my drive across town from the original confrontation I was
conversing with myself, the mature easy-going woman lecturing on
forgiveness and letting go of resentment to the macho little dude my
Daddy raised me to be.  Then, as the macho one, I responded with
stuff about honesty, respect, the Code of the West, and all that
crap.  I tend, most of the time, to laugh at myself when that Code
of the West stuff comes up, but it’s such a serious integral part of my
early childhood programming that it’s where a lot of my knee-jerk
responses come from.  I don’t know where Evil comes from, but
where I come from when you call someone a liar, them’s fighting
words.  That macho little dude in me is ready to start scrapping
when he hears fighting words.  Over the course of nearly sixty
years I have learned to think before I jump and to respond to fighting
words with questions such as, “What do you mean by that?” or “What
makes you think so?”  When I was younger, I’d “jump bad”, I would
kick, slap, bite, or pick up any convenient object to throw or use as a
cudgel, whatever seemed most appropriate at the time… naah, I’m
kidding about that “appropriate” part…. whatever urge hit me at the
time.  I’ve mellowed.

My reactions today and the way I felt as people were gathering, getting
coffee and settling down for that meeting after Evil walked out rather
than face me, showed me that I still have some mellowing and maturing
to do.  One of the men there, who when I first started going to
meetings had been hostile toward me because I don’t parrot the canned
phrases of the party line and don’t follow the “suit up, show up, get a
sponsor, work the steps 1-2-3 in order” bullshit, asked me how I’m
doing.  He has mellowed toward me as he has gotten to know me and
learned that I respect the steps and the program and just work it my
own way.  I felt he really wanted to know how I’m doing, so I
said, “I need to vent.”  I didn’t mention Evil’s name (anonymous,
remember?), but I said someone who barely knew me and had no call to do
it had called me a liar more than once and I was struggling to just let
it go.  He said, “Well, people will be people.”  I agreed.

Tonight’s topic was relationships, specifically our intimate family
relationships, and how addiction affects them and what we are doing to
extend our recovery programs into our intimate relationships. 
When there was a long pause and no one spoke up, I decided to
“share.”  I said that my family relationships were doing fine and
I have no trouble with resentment or trust issues there any more,
but… and I went on to talk about the debate between this mature
easy-going woman and the macho little dude inside.  It didn’t get
any laughs.  I would have been more comfortable if it had. 
Some people were visibly shocked.  It’s something I’ve gotten used
to seeing when I’m being honest. 

After grocery shopping, I dropped Greyfox at his cabin and started the
fifty-mile trip home.  Not until after Willow, more than halfway
here, did I come up behind a trucker with bright halogen lights to
pilot me safely through the moose.  Earlier, not far outside
Wasilla, I was going along not totally focused on the road, thinking
about Evil and my little macho dude inside, fighting words, and the
Code of the West.  I flipped my high beams back up after a string
of oncoming traffic, just in time to catch the green wink of reflection
from a moose’s eye.  I took my foot off the gas and before I could
put it on the brake pedal I was close enough to see the brown of its
body and the twinkling motion of its legs.  By my moving a little
slower and its moving a little faster, we both escaped unscathed. 
That got me focused, not only on the road but on clearing out my
feelings for Evil.  I understand.  He thought I lived with
Greyfox.  What I don’t understand is why he’d think I’d lie and
say I live 50 miles away if I didn’t.  That doesn’t matter. 
It doesn’t even matter to me that he was so cowardly he wouldn’t face
me to express his disbelief or stick around to discuss the
matter.  That’s his problem.  If he doesn’t keep it to
himself, if he happens to mention it to anyone who knows me and knows
where I live, they’ll set him straight.  If it happens, I wonder
how he’ll handle it.  I haven’t memorized the numbers, but one of
those twelve steps says, “…and when we were wrong, promptly admitted
it.”