... ..the ninth step ....July 28, 2005   Mark returned the telephone receiver to its cradle, slowly and softly, as though defusing a bomb.  Another friend had suddenly dropped dead and, like the other eleven, he had died exactly twelve days after receiving Mark's ninth-step amends.  Twelve amends, twelve days, twelve dead.  Maybe I'm not powerless over alcohol.  Maybe I'm the most powerful motherfucker who ever walked.  Maybe I'm so powerful, I can snuff out life with an apology. Stepping outside into the hot Omaha sunshine, Mark couldn't help noticing how stiff he'd become after only six hours in a recliner watching the Tour de France on his new 52" LCD television.  Stiff or not, he was hungry.  He needed a Red Bull. The can of energy drink was still in his hand when Mark took a seat in the cool, dark theater to watch a documentary about Amish penguins.  Mark loved documentaries and he had seen every one that Netflix had to offer.  As the screen brightened and the narration of Richard Dreyfus boomed from the Surround Sound speakers, Mark felt a familiar stirring in his loins, a stirring born of his peculiar lust for flightless birds. Then the talking began. Two Negro youths, the only two in Omaha, had sat directly behind Mark and had begun bullshitting at a volume that threatened to drown out Richard Dreyfus's scripted comments on the formal, yet Luddite ways of the film's subjects.  Though he tried everything he could think of--groaning, staring, shushing--Mark couldn't stop the boys from ruining the documentary with their talking. Then he remembered. "Excuse me," Mark said to the youths seated behind him. "I have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself and, in so doing, realize how wrong it was for me to discourage your playful banter which is far more important and appropriate than actually watching the film we have paid to view.  I see now that I was selfish and wrong.  I hope you will accept these direct amends.  I apologize." And, with that, Mark rose from his seat and left the theater, vowing to return in thirteen days. previous..|..current..|..archives..|..3d quarter index..|..next

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