Before you read this ..... sit down! Are you seated? Good.
When I lived in San Clemente, a neighbor crony, and I,took to drinking a couple beers one Saturday morning. After we consumed 4 six packs, we realized we had totally depleted the existing available inventory and took our activity to one of the local beer joints. We got 86ed with in an hour and felt we would be more welcome at the local "blood pump" the world renown Swallow's Inn, in San Juan Capistrano. This was an establishment that catered to the local Mexican families and field workers. The Swallows Inn provided a shit kickin band, "Nancy Lee and her Rhythm Rangers" . We took to some more beer, did some "shit kickin steps", played "people of color" pool with the Mexicans and generally made total if not complete fools of ourselves and avoided all the fights and family disagreements.
I awoke the next morning ....... bad day! Head ache, upset stomach, shitty disposition and a stack of monthly house hold bills staring at me, screaming for "payment"! While writing checks I noticed that my VISA reflected "bar tabs" of $485.00! I wrote out the check and asked myself how could I have consumed that much Brew of the Devil? If a beer is seventy five cents that would equate to 646.6 bottles of beer "on the wall" ... or 21 beers a day every day for a year. Now I really had a head ache! My participation in the ingestion was fairly restricted to Friday Nights and Saturdays.
Now my deep thought was interrupted by a phone call from the neighbor crony, the Walt. Walt said he had a very bad morning. He said he had to show a piece of property to a client up the street and knew he was close to death! His stomach and head were is deep stress and pain. We concluded this condition was due to either the excess dancing or the shooting of "pool"!
Walt told me he met the clients at the house, got as far as the kitchen, felt an immediate rush to enjoy a bowel movement, excused himself, left, drove home, 2 blocks, fumbled with the key to open the front door, ran for the bath room while projectile shitting his pants, got to the toilet dropped his shitty drawers, another blast, did the walls and finally got seated. He realized he had made a mess, had shit his new white carpet in the living room, and the walls in the bathroom were in need of care. He took to doing a quick "tidy", took a quick shower, changed clothes, called a carpet cleaning business, called a house cleaning service and returned to his clients at the other house. They, the clients, informed him they decided they had no interest in the house! It was a bad day!
Meanwhile I took to reviewing my VISA billings for the past 6 months and realized I was spending an average of $475.00 a month on bar tabs and house hold booze! I also realized all this consumption was not all going into my gullet for processing to a urinal. I considered Walt's dilemma, I considered my ache's and pains and shouted in a loud clear voice, " Never again shall the Elixir of the Lucifer touch these glorious lips"!
That was back in 1984 / 1983. I have not indulged in a drop since! Walt reduced his consumption to a glass of wine at dinner and an occasional beer! I discovered I was losing a lot of friends ...... I was not there to pick up the bar taps (the big spender from Chicago syndrome) AND, git this .. I put $475.00 a month into an interest bearing account every month for 10 years! Think about that for a while, that is one tidy sum! I still have the account! I contribute not to it, but its nice to look at on occasion!
Now when I am asked "when did I quit drinking?" I respond with " the day my crony Walt shit his pants"!
Today I drink cranberry juice "to aid and abet the passage of " my "consumables into" my "alimentary canal". I know, boring, dull, funless, dim-witted, insensitive, dispirited, spiritless, lackluster, lifeless, dead, uninteresting, dreary, humdrum, monotone, monotonous, pedestrian, irksome, tedious, tiring, and / or wearisome, but I have "you do the math" tangible George Washington's sitting in the bank instead of a flush down a urinal .....
