THE UNIVERSE DOESN'T LIKE IT WHEN I GET COCKY

Originally, I thought my attitude was simply due to human nature in that when I was frightened my automatic response was fight instead of flight.  It certainly wasn’t a well thought out response.  I was just 5’2” tall and weighed 107 pounds, so obviously common sense wasn’t at play here.

One time when I was 18 years old, I was walking downtown to pick up the family car from the police station where my brother worked as a dispatcher.  I wanted to make a quick trip to Salem. 

I was about a half mile from the station when two unkept, rough looking men walking on the street in my direction came over onto the sidewalk directly in my path and began laughing and making lewd gestures toward me.  The little voice in my head should have said run, but instead I was very angry, and it said you got this. 

I glared straight at them and kept walking forward with a “make my day” attitude.  I had three years of Aikido, a Japanese self-defense-based martial arts training behind me and I thought I could leave them both in the dust.  Never mind that I had zero experience putting any of that into practice. 

Lucky for me they were just teasing.  As we approached each other, they stepped to the side of the walk and bowed as I passed by.  Maybe that’s when my automatic survival response began taking on an edge of cockiness. 

I can just imagine the gods on Mount Olympus looking down and saying, “Get the popcorn.  We’re going to have fun with this one.”

I should have realized the first time I heard the Serenity Prayer that my exaggerated sense of self was going to lead me into some very interesting experiences. 

I was attending an Al-Anon meeting.  When we asked for serenity to accept the things we cannot change, I was sincerely confused.  I couldn’t think of a single thing that could possibly be out of my control to change if I just applied myself enough.   In my defense, I was quite young. 

The first time I got a heads-up message that cockiness was not in my best interest was when I was tossing the last few things on the U-Haul for my move from the Dallas-Fort Worth area to Fort Smith Arkansas.  I had a bundle of metal strips in my hand used to anchor shelves to the wall and I was running out to the truck in a heavy thunderstorm.  It was early morning and I was anxious to hit the road.

As I got close to the truck there was a loud boom from a nearby lightning strike.  I thought, “Oh smart Alice Claire, you’re running out into a thunderstorm carrying lightning rods.”  That thought was quickly followed by my know-it-all attitude saying, “I don’t think being struck by lightning is what God has in mind for me.”    

I was wrong.  I tossed the metal strips onto the truck, hopped back down, and was just closing the padlock on the rear door when lightning struck the truck.  It knocked me flat on my butt with a jolt and burned my fingers where I had been holding the lock. 

Instead of realizing it was the wake-up call that should have brought me out of my cockiness, I drove the four and a half hours to Fort Smith in a state of mild euphoria.  It finally made sense why my mother was given electroshock therapy to bring her out of her severe depression.  I felt powerful and in control. 

I took my next heads-up more seriously.  When I was in high school, I was an average to slightly below average student.  I didn’t lack intelligence, just motivation and I had a mild learning disability.  When I returned to college at age 50, I said to myself that I would do whatever it took to get straight A’s, and I did.

That first semester I worked hard, studied hard and pushed myself through mounds of stress, to achieve my academic goal.  I went into the second semester feeling more stress.  What I had accomplished in that first semester took its toll.  Now I had to maintain that level of stress if I wanted to succeed, or so I thought. 

My mind said yes.  My body said no way.  I had a mini stroke.  This time it wasn’t a bolt of lightning, some external force that struck me down, it was my own body.  I no longer felt invincible. 

It was time I accepted that not all things were in my control, that I couldn’t do it all, and that I had to set some priorities.  I decided that B’s were also acceptable grades, if achieving them didn’t cause undo stress.   For the past twenty-six years I’ve continued to respectfully listen to my body and set priorities. 

I can finally say I’ve learned that cockiness doesn’t work for me.  I don’t know if it works for anyone. 

Feisty on the other hand works quite well.