When I was around 11 or 12, some friends and I were gathered under the bridge (yes, just like in the RHCP song, but in a Podunk town in upstate NY, not in LA) hanging out with the resident bad boy, Scott Brown. Truth be told, we were all bad boys, smoking cigarettes and spray painting graffiti ( albeit under the bridge where nobody could see it), but Scott had risen to a new level of bad boy. He was 15, ya see. And there were actually a couple of girls there with him, so, yeah, he was pretty much a total bad ass in our book.
But no, he wasn’t our hero. We didn’t think being a total bad ass was even desirable…yet. We looked at him more as…well…I shiver to admit it, but we thought of him as a “scum bag” was what we called them back then…not proud of thinking that way, but that’s what we thought.
Anyways, long story short, we were trying to get some beer. But Scott turned out to not be connected like we thought. I’ll never forget him saying " man, I haven’t been drunk in like, a month!" And me thinking “wow, he actually sees that as a long time? What a loser!”
Fast forward to today, where I’m proud of going 9 days without!
That 12 year old kid I once was certainly wasn’t wise to the ways of the world yet but then again, neither are we in the grand scheme of things as we spin around on this pale blue dot in a remote galaxy of an infinite universe.
Be proud, but stay humble! Keep it “in perspective” as they say, acknowledging that our own perspective, like that of a 12 year old brat, 15 year old bad ass, or 9 days on the wagon recovering alcoholic, is woefully incomplete.