Meltdown

I had a meltdown last Friday which lasted all weekend.

I was a complete douchenozzle for some of the time (I was pretty well-behaved on Saturday night).

It started on Friday when I got home from my job in NY and found two packages I could've done without. One was a letter, with affidavit, from the NYC Transit Authority, wanting me to tell them the entire story of the transit fare card incident at 53rd & Lex on August 24th. The other was a packet from my surgeon wanting all kinds of tests and clearances, from my internist and from my cardiologist, prior to my upcoming robotic prostectomy on October 14th.

In and of themselves, they were nothing. I was out about $58.00 with the MTA and the other stuff would kill a couple of vacation days during the next few weeks.

It could be much worse. These are high-quality problems for somebody who, 11 years ago, didn't have a job and was virtually homeless.

Somewhere along the way, my gratitude, which ordinarily colors most of my thinking, flew right out the window.

What saved me was having a schedule and sticking to it, of meetings and forced association with other recovering drunks like me.

I arose Saturday morning, grunting with resentment, and dragged myself to my local 12-Step, 7:00 a.m. meeting. Then, I dragged myself to a 10:00 a.m. meeting in Princeton. Then I took myself to see the new Matt Damon movie (GREAT!) and capped it by driving 80 miles (round-trip) to a gay 12-Step meeting in Pennsylvania with a couple of beginners in tow. That was good. It kept me focused on them, and not on myself.

Sunday, I was a grump again. A fax machine in Atlantic City kept attack-dialing my home phone number, starting at 6:30 a.m.. I did a reverse look-up on the internet of the number and got an e-mail address and phone number for the company. I sent an e-mail and left a voicemail, basically threatening them with physical violence if they didn't subdue their lousy fax machine. Eventually it gave up.

I went to my usual Sunday 12-step meeting, sat in the back and growled at everyone, including my sponsor.

I fled the meeting, went to the supermarket, went home and spent the afternoon isolating, napping and generally feeling sorry for myself.

This morning, I attended my home group meeting at 7:30, got to the office, took all the steps to "do the next, right, thing" and suddenly life is worth living again.

I owe this mostly to a) God, b) the program and c) people who care about me.

We have a saying in 12-Step programs which is very annoying:

"This too shall pass."

It did.

Ooops, I pissed off the Bus Company!

So I sent that e-mail yesterday and, lo and behold, I got a fast response from one of my state legislators who, it turns out, hates Academy Bus lines as much as I now do.

The other one was from the Terminal Manager of Academy Bus. He was clearly not a happy camper and immediately set out to slap my hand because I transposed two numbers when I referred to the bus with the fucked-up airconditioning.

THAT'LL TEACH ME.

He also denied that they don't have an overnight maintenance shift and cordially invited me to "drive by the facility" sometime at night to view the lit up yard... from afar. He went on to explain that "due to ongoing construction, it wouldn't be safe to invite you IN."

He denied that they send out buses with broken air-conditioning, which is just a bald-faced lie. And, finally, he said, more or less, that his drivers were the finest drivers on earth and needed no adjustment to their attitudes or their abilities.

Yeah. Right. Yada-yada-yada.

Like I care about his problems.

So I've been busy cooking up a "form" for evaluating bus service, on a ride by ride basis, which I intend to print up and hand out to everyone at my bus station for the next several weeks. It tracks things like the arrival and departure times vs. the actually scheduled times, the status of the coach interior, the comfort of the seats, whether or ot the a/c was working, the courteousness/professionalism of the driver and a special column to note any "mitigating circumstances" regarding the commute. That would be for things like unavoidable delays on the highway due to accidents or weather. Look, I want to be fair about this.

I got this idea from my days of living in New York City. When I moved to New York in 1978 the subways were a shiteous mess. Graffiti blocked all the windows on the cars, the platforms were filthy, trains arrived late, if at all, and the whole place reeked of human excrement and exuded danger at every turn.

Then somebody, God bless 'em, started to organize and the next thing anybody knew there was something call "The Straphangers Association" and all of a sudden there were people, with clipboards and stop-watches and schedules and forms, standing on every subway platform, making copious notes about arrivals and departures and announcements and MTA employees.

And in no time at all the subways were suddenly clean, and new, and beautiful and safe and you could finally understand the announcements blaring from the loudspeakers (well, sometimes).

All the politicians in New York City couldn't do a friggin' thing about the lousy subways... but a handful of citizens could.

I believe in citizen action. I believe in citizen OVERSIGHT.

Now I want the mofos who run the bus companies where I live to be accountable. Something they are not now. Or not much. Mostly there's a lot of standing around and fingerpointing and denying everything.

They're like 4 year olds alone in a room with a broken lamp. "IT FELL" they say.

Oh, and that state legislator I mentioned, above. She wants me to join her rabble-rousing campaign to put a knife to the bus companies collective throats.

I emailed her back, "SIGN ME UP, ASSEMBLYWOMAN!"