I listen to my commentaries from time to time, and I can sound quite self-righteous, a bit “holier than thou,” and I don’t much care for it.
Perhaps you’re familiar with the expression “beware the reformed.” It means those that have returned from the brink of some excess tend to be evangelizers of their new ways. They’re the alcoholics, for example, who insufferably rail about the dangers of alcohol and preach abstinence, former smokers who warn off smoking, sinners who have committed what they feel are above average sins in both volume and degree that now implore us to quickly turn to JeeeZuss.
My self-righteous tone and the warning to “beware the reformed” hit me between the eyes this week. A friend sent a photo of himself at a service station in Babb, Montana. It triggered a memory.
Babb is a very small town on the western edge of the Blackfoot Indian reservation and the eastern edge of Glacier National Park. In college I worked two summers in Glacier National Park and there was a bar in Babb called the Babb Bar. It is there that my name, so I’m told, was on a list posted on the wall. I never saw that list. It was a list of those the Babb Bar had banned for life.
It was the end of my second summer at Glacier. I was convinced I had become a cuckold by my then girlfriend. A confrontation with whom I imagined was her beau was brewing. Before I could control myself to have a calm conversation, I resorted to shouting and accusations, and as was my case at that time, to prepare for the showdown I knew would occur that night, I guzzled a few too many long island iced teas. (And to my kids who might someday hear this – this is long, long before I even knew your mother existed.)
At the Babb bar that night, the alleged beau stepped out of the men’s room. I was on my way in. I exploded as soon I saw him. A shouting match, then my pitiful attempt to throw a punch. It was an airball. I missed him completely. However, the momentum of my punch, influenced by the many long island iced teas, carried me into him, then onto him, and we fell in a pile and began a shouting, wrestling match on the nasty Babb Bar bathroom floor. We were both thrown out. As the instigator, my name was added to the “Banned for Life” list the next day.
My self-righteous tones in these commentaries need to be contrasted with the way I used to be. “Beware the reformed, Cam,” I tell myself, “because you’ve become one of ‘em. Tone it down. You’re becoming an ass.”
Marcus Aurelius had a servant walk behind him during his triumphal processions. The servant was to repeatedly whisper “You will die someday.” It was meant to keep Aurelius humble. If the Babb Bar still exists, and if you’re ever there, and that list still exists, send me a photo. I’d like to print it and put it next to the chair where I write these commentaries each week - and work to rid myself of these self-righteous tones.
I’m Cam Marston, and I’m just trying to keep it real.
