Alcoholics need babysitters.
Story from “This is True”by Randy Cassingham, with his “tagline:â€
“SOMEHOW, THEY REMINDED HIM OF MOM: Dancers at a strip club in Tampa, Fla., called the sheriff about a customer. ‘It was the way he was acting,’ one said — not just that he was intoxicated, but it was the baby. ‘I asked, ‘Where’s the mom?’,’ the dancer said, but the man was ‘evasive’ about why he had the 6-month-old, and what he was doing with it. Finally, the man blurted out his plan: ‘I need someone to watch the baby for a week or two,’ he told the dancer, Minouche Eliasin. ‘I’ll come back,’ he promised. ‘You guys are so nice. Thanks, I appreciate it.’ By then deputies had arrived and charged Robert Hancock, 44, with child neglect. (Tampa Tribune) …Look, pal: it’s a strip joint, not a baby-sitting service — unless of course you count their regular clients.â€
Luckily, the baby will live, but this is the sort of alcoholism that can cause a baby’s death”and unless Hancock gets sober, might still.
But Randy’s clever tagline speaks volumes about the mindset of the typical alcoholic. Regulars at strip joints are generally either collegians or alcoholics, or both. Emotional growth stops the day alcoholism is triggered, average age 13. When we consort with alcoholics, we deal with emotional adolescents. When drinking they indeed need babysitting”if only to protect the rest of us.
(Story and tagline from “This is True,”copyright 2008 by Randy Cassingham, used with permission.)
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