A musical!
Here, this will be in your head all day, guaranteed…
A musical!
Writing silly rhymes is fun and pretty damn easy, too.
Writing silly rhymes is fun and pretty damn easy, too.
(Thank you, RyhmeZone!)
PLUS, it worked!
I
could JUST NOT be intensely troubled by the Ochre Joker while writing silly and
irreverent songs!
This story - at least the I am Bill W. one - is well known. Somewhat.
In a nutshell, Bill Wilson founded Alcoholics Anonymous and all the other
Twelve Step programs which sprang from AA.
BUT, Bill’s great defeat – his enduring regret – is that he
never convinced Ebby Thacher to join him “on the broad highway”.
And, oh so ironically, Ebby is the ONE person who was able
to convince Bill to get sober!
Years before Bill spread his “news” to Bob Smith
and they began to work together (but separately – Bob was in Akron; Bill was in
NYC), Ebby had approached a drunken Bill with religion – a good ol' fashioned
Christian conversion! He showed up at Bill’s after being “missing in action” for
years of street living and drunkenness.
The OXFORDS – an early 20th
century "high brow" Christian social group had bailed Ebby out of jail. Literally. So he was grateful. Plus, he liked that the OXFORDS all had money and that they
thought HE did. (He'd squandered his inheritance before he ended up homeless. Maybe the OXFORDS still thought there was a nickle to squeeze somewhere because they generally INSISTED on helping only the classiest down-and-outs. Before Ebby, they had dried out young Bud "Whatever you drive, drive a Firestone."
This version of Bill's story is a bit like The Gift of the Magi; with the
girl cutting her hair to buy her boyfriend a watch chain, while the boy sells his watch to buy her hair combs. I mean, it might be like that tale if the girl chose an alcoholic death after she rescued her boyfriend from addiction. Yeah, maybe it's NOT like O. Henry's story.
Bill’s love for Ebby, though, WAS pretty thoroughly unrequited.
So, the story is a one-sided bromance, with Bill Wilson
getting the world’s acclaim and recognition but not Ebby’s love or respect, which is all he every really wanted.
Heck, EBBY SAID is about loving a drunk!
Oh snap! It’s an
Al Anon story! It's about Codependency!
Go figure.
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