Tag Archives: fear

How the Worst that Can Happen Can Be the Best, in Three Episodes

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Stress, How the Worst that Can Happen Can Be the Best, in Three Episodes

The “Riding into Mexico City on Mangos” Incident

Dateline: Mexico City Hilton Reforma Branch Office. Being here in this fine high rise hotel, I can’t help comparing this visit to another when accommodations were not quite so lovely. And a night when I learned an important life lesson.

Sometimes the worst thing that can happen turns out to be the best thing that could happen, only you don’t know that, of course, when everything is going wrong. But something good can come out of a mess. After all, we didn’t end up raped and murdered on the side of that toll way coming into Mexico City after midnight that rainy night.

Every word of this story is true, though portions have been toned down and presented in fictional pieces since no one would believe me except my family and they choose to focus on my better qualities. The ride into Mexico City began the day before the night when everything happened, indeed a very special day. First, at ten in the morning, the judge in Houston brought the gavel down on my bizarre ten-month marriage to my stepbrother. Then at four in the afternoon my friend, Sister Victoria Marie, turned in her final papers at the convent in San Antonio. Exiting the limo my lawyer had hired for the overnight trip from Austin and back (thinking teenage divorcees had to be easy), I hopped in the used Mustang I’d purchased through the student credit union, picked up the Sister, who was now back to being Sam (Sonia), and we did what every early loser in Texas does on the weekend after their first failed attempt at adulthood.

We headed for the border.

We loaded up the trunk with diet drinks and blasted all the way to Monterrey the first night since she had rich relatives there. They took us out to KFC where we christened our journey the Freedom Celebration Hayride, a name which would later seem a haunting omen. The next day we cut south for Mexico City, just Sam, me, and El Sanborn, sucking up our freedom.   El Sanborn, a point-by-point guide provided free with Mexican auto insurance, was the man giving all the directions and the only man we were listening to on this trip.  The August day was hot and perfect even after mid-afternoon when we’d retrieved a couple of diet root beers from the drunk which had exploded in our faces.

Everything was funny and fun. Sam and I had been given a second chance. We couldn’t possibly mess up our lives again, at least not any time real soon. Not long after we congratulated each other with that thought, the tequila started to kick in. Around four we’d stopped into this lovely ex-hacienda hotel on El Sanborn’s recommendation and had what we referred to as a stylishly late adult lunch. Then back on the freedom highway kicking on the past and planning limitless futures.

Ready to roll the dice one more time. Then, again, thinking building a life could be accomplished by throwing dice at all was what landed us this highway in Mexico in the middle of the night.

Tune in tomorrow when the Freedom Celebration Hayride takes a terrifying detour.

The “Iced Coffee Incident”

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  Fear, Part One. One way of treating certain cancers is by “planting” a device which emits medicine.  Think of it as a clicking machine buried deep in your being.  A masterpiece out of which beams rays that change the way your cells work.

This is the way fear works.  Fear changes your cells. . . Fear changes your muscles and your organs and YOUR BEHAVIOR.  Which is how I ended up sucking back hideous iced coffee when I could have been enjoying a frosty Coke.  This happened in the sixth grade  and as far as I can tell, it’s been downhill ever since. 

(Keep in mind, if mysteryshrink is just too tainted, and you need the illusion of a psychologist with an unblemished background, there’s always Dr. L on the radio.  Though she’s not a psychologist.  She a “moral advisor” who hasn’t and doesn’t make mistakes.) 

In the middle of my sixth grade year, my family moved.  That summer, I returned to old small town to meet up with my thirteen year old buddies.  We went to a movie then swung by the drugstoreand settled into a booth like we had “back in the day.”  Before I had a chance to figure out what was happening, my friends had all ordered ”coffee” without a flinch. 

Well, I didn’t drink coffee and it had never crossed my mind that I WAS SO BEHIND MY FRIENDS.  I panicked.  My “loser-hood” was about to become obvious since I hadn’t considered myself cool enough to order coffee and just the thought of the hot steaming beverage scared me.  (Don’t forget, there’s always Dr. L.)  I had to recover quickly, so I said the first sophisticated thing that came to my head.  “I’ll have iced coffee,” I said, with a slight tilt of my chin hinting that “iced” coffee was what my super-cool crowd   in the big city were into.

And, in order to avoid criticism, I sipped up every bitter molecule of that awful drink that only grew more disgusting with the half cup of sugar I dumped into it.

So, that’s what fear of criticism can do.  Maybe I learned something about how my EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM can take charge of my life. Maybe my honesty (read: willingness to reveal total weinniness) gives the rest of you guys some ideas. 

Or at least, we can pair that bitter iced coffee afternoon with what I heard a coach say about a recent loss.

“We’ll take it and use it.  The boys made some bad choices this afternoon.  We’ll do better.  Good choices come from Experience. Experience comes from bad choices.”