Day Nine

When I was five years old I almost choked to death on a piece of peppermint candy. It was a late Sunday afternoon and I was at my stepmother's side as she washed dishes. As usual, I was bouncing around and jabbering nonsense - probably telling her one of my made-up stories - when suddenly the little red and white striped candy slipped from my tongue and lodged in my throat. I fell to the floor, thrashing around, and clutching my throat for what seemed like ages. Finally, my stepmother reached down a glass of water to me. I grabbed it, gulped, and swallowed that little piece of candy. I did not have another piece of peppermint candy for thirteen years.

Thirteen years. Each time I was offered one I would decline, sometimes explaining that one just like it almost killed me, sometimes with no explanation. When they showed up in my Halloween booty, I'd give them all to my siblings. It was simple, see. My five year old mind learned something - peppermint candy bad for you - and she didn't need or desire to test and re-test what she had learned. As we say in the rooms, she didn't need to go out and do more research. I finally, cautiously, put a piece of peppermint candy in my mouth when I was eighteen. I sucked on it for just a couple minutes, long enough to convince myself that I could stop fearing it, then spit it out. In the twenty or so years since then, I have not had peppermint candy more than a handful of times. It isn't that I am afraid - I know intellectually that peppermint candy itself does not cause choking - it simply is that that memory I formed as a five year old is so indelible, I'd rather not tempt fate.

So, why is it that as a five year old I could learn a lesson and stick to it and as a nineteen year old, after being terribly embarrassed by my first drinking episode I decided to keep at it until I "got it right?" A counselor at the first rehab I attended said to me "I've never met anyone too dumb to get recovery, but I have met many people too smart to get it." It isn't that I was dumb as a five year old - it's that I had not yet learned the art of rationalization. I wonder if I had first gotten drunk as a five year old, if I might have spared myself years of alcoholic agony.