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About once a week, my 14-year-old sends me a meme or a YouTube video of a kid complaining about their parents for giving them a hard time about something. It’s always something like “My mom yells at me for having old food in my room, while other kids are out doing drugs and getting pregnant.”

I get where she’s coming from. I used to think the same thing every time my parents gave me a hard time for something that I deemed a small thing. Why don’t they let this one thing go because of all the more important good things I have been doing? They probably had the same gripe about their parents. It is a tale as old as time, I’m sure.

But as I usually do, I told her, “That’s not how things work at our house. Just because I don’t kick puppies doesn’t mean I deserve a statue. We have high standards around here.” She rolled her eyes and groaned, and honestly, it was well deserved.

I think her point is worth considering. And I think the point I was making is true… but I also think I’m full of s**t a lot about this idea. For many years when I was in active addiction, I would find loopholes about why I had a problem… but not a HUGE problem. I would always find one person who was a bigger trainwreck than me, and say, “Well, at least I’m not as bad as so-and-so.”

And when I got to rehab, I thought I absolutely belonged… until I heard a dude share about how he’d recently been arrested and sent to treatment because he got coked up and tried to rob an Amtrak train. I remember saying to my sponsor, “You know, I have robbed zero trains. So maybe I don’t need recovery.”

Luckily, I stuck around, and began to understand that all bottoms are different heights. Mine might have been a little higher than some others as far as losing things like a marriage or a job, but I had lost all my dignity, all my control, all my self-esteem. So my bottom was pretty ugly, even if it looked okay on paper.

Now that I have been sober for awhile, I still catch myself acting like an a*****e at work or with my wife or kids, and I’ll say to myself, “Well, hey, at least I am present, and I paid all our bills last month. So I am doing okay.” That’s kind of the mentality of my kid when she sends me those memes—“I did the really, really important stuff and didn’t do anything terrible, so why are you giving me a hard time?”

The truth is, I want my kids to learn good habits. Yes, that includes not doing drugs as a teenager and avoiding unwanted pregnancies. But there’s also room for not having maggots eating last Tuesday’s dinner on your bedroom floor.

That goes for me, too. I can’t act like a dick and then shrug because I have a job and am sober. I need a higher standard than that. So I guess my suggestion to anybody reading or listening to this is to find a grumpy teenager, and have them bombard you with memes and videos about how much you suck for pushing them to do better. It’s a great motivator!

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

The octogenarian AA was having a check-up and the doctor asked her, "Have you ever fallen and couldn't get up?"

"Yes," she replied.

"What did you do?" the doctor asked.

Responded the 85-year-old: "I quit drinking!"

(Credit: AA Grapevine, September 2008, Deanna S. of Canton, Georgia)

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