Harold's Wife and The Bus Driver

Hi. My name is Gil and I'm an alcoholic. I'm new here and new to sobriety.

I love to blog. Here is one I wrote a couple weeks ago about two people I met, one of them a friend of Bill W.

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“HAROLD!! WE SHOULDN’T BE CROSSING HERE!!”
Harold’s wife exclaimed. I never did get her name, but I sure got Harold’s name. His wife kept shouting it out every
few minutes as we all waited for the bus together.

I’ve come to terms and accepted what’s been happening to me. There have been times
when I get overwrought and remorseful. I think about what I used to
have. The freedom. The paychecks. The wild adventures. Things were
pretty good on the outside, but maybe I was overcompensating for a
barren inner existence.

In any case, when I say I accept it, it means I am appreciating the new state of mind and way at looking at the
world through sobriety that the universe has been gracious enough to
grant me. That said, if there is anything I really still miss about my
old life it has to do with transportation. I think most of us take our
car for granted; it’s a necessity. Being exclusively on public
transportation for the first time since I was a teenager, well, it has
it’s challenges.

See, I am grateful for my new life, but I could be grateful a lot more efficiently and in many more places more
quickly if I had a car.

The harsh reality of being relegated to the bus really hits me hard when I run into people like
Harold’s wife.

“WE’LL GET A TICKET, HAROLD!! WE SHOULDN’T HAVE CROSSED THE STREET IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BLOCK
LIKE THAT!!”

Harold’s wife continued to berate him as they stepped up on the sidewalk, still 200 feet away, but quite
audible. I didn’t hear Harold. Just his wife. In fact, I don’t think
Harold said anything for the whole encounter.

We were on a side street in a mixed residential and commercial part of this suburb of
Seattle in which I dwell. The block connected two larger arteries, and
so they put the bus stop right in the middle. Traffic was very sparse
on the street, and even an elderly couple like Harold and his wife were
at no risk crossing in the middle of the block. Jaywalking made a heck a
lot more sense than walking half a block one way and then coming back.

As Harold and the missus got to the stop, a taxi rolled by. Harold’s wife
saw the back of the Crown Vic with its antennas sticking out, and
thought they had just escaped being busted.

“I WONDER WHY HE DIDN’T STOP US?! HE COULD HAVE GIVEN US A JAYWALKING TICKET!”

I use the all caps because everything Harold’s wife said, she yelled. She
sounded and looked like a cross between Edith Bunker and Mrs. Costanza,
and she had a running commentary about everything that was going on
around us.


On the street in front of is, in the light afternoon traffic, one car slowed down to make a left into a driveway, maybe not using a turn signal or something, because the car behind it honked.
This set Harold’s wife off.

“WHAT WAS HE HONKING AT, HAROLD?!? THAT PERSON JUST WANTED TO TURN INTO A DRIVEWAY!
I MEAN, WHAT ARE THEY DOING HONKING?!?” she exclaimed
with fervent indignation. You’d think the car had run over her cat or
something. “THEY’RE JUST MAKING A LEFT! NO NEED
TO HONK YOUR HORN! SOME PEOPLE!! JEEZ!! HONKING YOUR HORN LIKE THAT?!
WHAT DO THEY THINK THEY’RE DOING?!?”

This went on for another 30 seconds or so. Mind you, both cars were well passed
even before Harold’s wife had even started into her diatribe.

“HAROLD, WHAT ARE THEY HAMMERING ON?!?” Harold’s wife turned to her next source of annoyance. Behind us was a
sprawling apartment complex and some kind of minor repairs were being
done, at least that’s what I assume because there were, in fact, the
noise of someone hammering nails into wood not too far away.

Harold’s wife had to find out what was going on. Could this hammering noise be
something to get upset about? There was a bit of hesitancy in her
whining. She wanted to be outraged over hammering noises but she wasn’t
sure if she should be. That, by itself, was enough to upset her.

“WHAT COULD THEY BE HAMMERING ON, HAROLD? HAROLD?!?” The couple shuffled over a ways, hoping to get a visual inspection of this
unique and possibly momentous hammering event. “I
CAN’T SEE WHAT THEY’RE HAMMERING ON, HAROLD! THE NOISE! WHAT ARE THEY
DOING, HAROLD???”

I caught the eye of another random pedestrian waiting for the bus. We exchanged smirks. I was
sitting on some concrete steps with a few bags of groceries. I looked
down and saw an ant crawling on one of my bags. I looked again and saw
an ant trail crossing the base of the stair on which I was sitting.

When you’re realize you’re sitting in ants, there’s an instinctual reaction,
even if you’re not getting bit (which I wasn’t). I jumped up and
started looking for ants on my legs.

As you might imagine, this drew the immediate attention of Harold’s wife.

“ANTS?!?!?”

“Yeah,” I responded, “there’s a trail of them there,” and pointed to where I
was sitting.

“OHHHHHHH!!” Harold’s wife screeched. You might think ‘ohh’ is NOT a syllable that could be
screeched, but she managed. Here was a great new focus for her
indignation! Sitting in ants, heck, that was far worse than being
honked at in a car! She couldn’t really complain AT the ants, so she
turned her attention to the unnamed people responsible. They were,
after all, likely responsible for that hammering too!

“AAAAANTS!!” she declared, “THAT’S JUST TERRIBLE!!”

I felt like I should assure her that I was okay, but refrained.

“THEY SHOULD BE SPRAYING HERE, THAT’S WHAT THEY SHOULD BE DOING! I MEAN, ANTS!!! HORRIBLE!!”

I am not exaggerating here folks, that’s actually what she said. I got a crazy
thought. I would try to reason with Harold’s wife.

“Well, ma’am,” I said politely, “If they spray insecticide here, when it rains,
it will run off into the drains, and eventually into Puget Sound. I’d
rather have a few ants than poisoned fish.”


Harold’s wife looked at me dumbfounded. She made everyone else’s pain her own. Why wasn’t I playing along?

“OH.” she said and paused.

Did I get through to her?

“NO. NO, NOT HERE!”

Apparently, we were on some magical block of Lynnwood where pesticides didn’t
eventually flow into the waters of the salmon spawning grounds. I had
no idea. Fortunately, at that point, the bus arrived and I made sure I
sat as far away from Harold and his wife as possible.

Crazy people on the bus and at the bus stop. Yeah, it’s almost cliché, but
getting back to my original point, this is part of bums me out about
riding the bus: my fellow passengers. I am one of them. These folks
are my peers.


The next day, I was off on another bus trip. Off to a 12-step meeting at a beach bonfire in a nearby town. In a car, it would have been a 20 minute drive. With multiple buses and transfers, I left
my house 90 minutes before I wanted to be there. Usually, this doesn’t
bother me because I’m always reading something, and right now, I’m
immersed in a great book. I wasn’t really looking forward to the trip
either.

The bus driver on the second of my two buses was a remarkable person. He was one of those people who just radiates good
feeling. I read on a MySpace status update today “always have people
leave you happier than when they found you,” or something along
those lines. Only a zombie, or maybe Harold’s wife, could possibly get
off that guy’s bus without being happier. He greeted everyone
enthusiastically. Found something to compliment them on. Read whatever
was printed on their T-shirt. Sang goofy songs as he drove. Came up
with unique and interesting names for each of the bus stops.


“185th and 66th!! Under the willow tree! That’s right! The grand old WILLOW
TREE!” he shouted
out. He made the bus trip seem like you were on an amusement ride at a
theme park. The Voyage to Mukiltopia!

He wasn’t getting paid to be funny. He wasn’t mentally ill. This guy just had an incredibly
positive attitude and was happy to share that with the world.

It came to pass that everyone got off the bus except me. I was the last
passenger as we were stuck in traffic, heading towards the line’s end at
the water.

“So, you’re reading a book there?” the bus driver asked me. Normally, I would be mildly
perturbed by such an obvious question. Yes, I am reading a book and so
stop bugging me. In this case though, the bus driver’s cheer was
infectious and so I engaged in conversation. Asked him how close we’d
come to the beach park where the bonfire was going to be. Let him know I
was appreciative of the beautiful weather and the chance to be by the
water.

“So, what’s the bonfire for?” he asked.

“It’s an AA event.” I responded somewhat sheepishly. Lots of people don’t get it and think of AA as a home for rejects,
losers and the mentally or morally defective.

“OH!! There’s a meeting on the beach?!” he asked excitedly.

“Yes!”

“I’ve been sober and a friend of Bill W for 22 years!”

Now, this guy really was my hero.

We all face choices every day. Probably the most important choice we get
to make is how we react to events and conditions, both good stuff and
bad stuff. How we reacted yesterday will influence how we react today,
but it doesn’t determine it. There is nothing that can happen to you
that you cannot at least try to make a choice in how you react to it. I
mean look at me. No car. No job. Can’t drink. Probably going to jail
soon, and well, I’ve never been happier!

Harold’s wife only knows way of reacting: indignation and outrage over everything. It
gives her a sense of power and control. The world is her enemy and
fighting the honking horns, hammering sounds and ants gives her purpose
in her life. Something is wrong with everything. The bus driver only
reacts one way too, but as an alcoholic, is probably quite familiar with
other ways. His joy in living is so apparent and he gets to spread
that joy all over town. He sees something right with everything.

The next time I start to get bummed out about being without transportation,
I need to remember I get to choose how I feel about that. Without
riding the bus, I wouldn’t have met either of these people who so
clearly demonstrate the two different ways you can approach living.

You can either be Harold’s wife or you can be the bus driver. You choose.