Flytipping

Sometimes I feel like the Madame Tootsie Bagel blog tends to get a bit overconfessional, particularly about my past misdeeds and foibles. (By the way – point of procedure – it’s pronounced “Madame” as in the way British shopkeepers or Judge Judy say Madame, not as in the French manner.) I do disclose my past oopsies with a great deal of candor, probably too much so. Dad says I’m remarkably open on the blog, and has sent me a text from time to time of issues he doesn’t want me to mention. Lips sealed.

Max told me yesterday that he got caught up on a bunch of my recent blog entries while he was on the phone holding with the computer tech service people. (I’m honored). He had a few interesting comments, including about my recent post Guideposts in which I mentioned my high school friend Susan getting back in touch with me a couple of years ago with an apology for teenage “bullying.” Max remarked that maybe Susan was “working her Fourth Step” and trying to “make an amends” to people in her life she had hurt. This is 12 Step lingo from Alcoholics Anonymous. He said that people working this step often get in touch with high school friends and associates to apologize and ask forgiveness for high school stuff.

Max has been in AA for many years, since he was a teenager and got thrown out of a college for misconduct related to alcoholism and entered rehab. (He finished college and graduate school elsewhere.) Being non-drinkers is one of the things that brought us together.

From what I gather, during the Fourth Step, people in the program are supposed to make a “searching and fearless moral inventory” of their good and bad character traits and think about “amends” to people they have hurt. This is not easy, obviously, and many people in AA and other 12 Step groups spend a lot of time doing and redoing Step 4 with their sponsors. Max often announces that he is off to meet with his sponsor concerning Step 4, or that he is redoing Step 4 in order to really put more work into it.

Personally, I think I could ace Step 4. I could very easily make an inventory of my character defects that was alphabetical, chronologically annotated, immensely detailed, and probably illustrated as well. All the times I have lied, alienated people around me, felt jealous or bitter, acted like a big shot, shirked responsibility, or failed to read the room. Then I could make a kind of newsletter confessing all, making my amends, illustrating it with a nice catchy background and layout, and mail it off to everyone I can find from the kid I stuck my tongue out at in pre-school to down to the neighbor whose trash can I used for my dog’s poo bag last week. (By the way, when we were in the UK, Max and I kept seeing signs near our hotel that said “No Flytipping.” We had no idea what this meant, but we imagined it was something highly illegal, perhaps related to animal cruelty or vivisection. Finally we realized it meant “no dumping your trash in our garbage cans.” Just so you know.)