I was voted “Most Likely to Die Before 21,” when I was in high school. One of the teachers responsible for the yearbook caught the title on the final edit, and so it didn’t make it into the Senior Yearbook, but there were copies of it passed around.
The photo was of me sitting on the bleachers in my ancient army jacket, drinking out of a bottle, the label unseen.
It’s difficult to believe I got away with the things I did in high school, or for a long time after that.
It’s even harder to believe that I’ll be sixty-five on Sunday, November the 9th.
I started drinking at age thirteen. I started smoking pot when I was fourteen. Between the first Valium I stole from a friend’s mom’s stash, until I found decent connections for Quaaludes, I never met a drug I didn’t like. Some I loved.
A friend of mine found a bottle with five pills in it and he had long since forgotten what they were. I took all five of them and washed them down with Jack Daniels. Or so I’m told. I don’t remember most of that night.
We jumped off bridges and railroad trestles and into the dark waters of the Chattahoochee River. Mostly, we did this during daylight hours, but I once took off at midnight over the concrete rail of the bridge and into total darkness. A light at the Tenneco Oil Company dock, a quarter of a mile away was the beacon I used to find the shore, and it was a little freaky swimming at night like that. The alligators were not as common back in the late 70’s as they are now or I would have been lizard food. My friend who dropped me off on the bridge and then picked me up told me he didn’t think I would do it.
I caught rattlesnakes barehanded. I dared a guy to shoot me while I was holding a rattlesnake. I disarmed a man by charging him with a rattlesnake longer than I was tall.
All of this before I was twenty-one.
I joined the Army at twenty-two, was kicked out of Alcoholics Anonymous for denying I had a problem, and my Commanding Officer and I had a discussion about this. But I had six months left and he decided to let me drift on, and get out. And I did.
In 1990 I met a woman who was not going to put up with the way I drank. She broke up with me about the time I got a job with the DOT, which I thought I would hang around with until I got my truck paid off.
In 1991 I bought a PC. I started writing.
Alcohol and I divorced as soon as I realized that no matter how many writers before me had been drunks, I couldn’t write as well when I was drinking.
I spent twenty-seven years with the DOT then retired. And I kept writing. Drinking? Not entirely dry, but close enough to it not to worry about what I did last night.
At sixty five years old, I can tell you creativity can save your life. It can change your life. It can take away habits you never wanted to lose. It can put life in a perspective that time spent wasted is wasted time.
Take Care,
Mike
