For the past week I've been caught in a shit storm at work for two incidents that are not my fault. Wait, isn't that what the guilty guy always says? Well maybe in movies but I swear, I'm an innocent man.
As I sort my way through this mess I'm brought back to a lesson I taught just today. The topic was Ulysses S. Grant and his life before and during the Civil War. Popular history paints Grant as a drunk who resigned his position from the Army in 1854 because of his drinking problem. After reading a biography of Grant, I learned that while he indeed drink from time to time, he was no drunk. His worst drinking came as a result of a difficult commanding officer who made his life a living hell and a longing for his wife and child in Galena, Illinois over 2,000 miles away from his post in the Oregon Territory. Grant resigned, moved to St. Louis where failed in business before returning to Galena to work at his father's tannery. When the South seceded, Grant returned to the Army, first as a desk worker then as the Commander of the 21st Illinois and later the savior of a fledgling Union army. Even so, Grant is still remembered in many accounts as a drunk.
Is drinking when life gets shitty a bad thing? At the end of the day Grant drank too much because his boss was an asshole and he missed his wife and kids, including a son whose birth he missed. Can't we all kind of relate to family issues and an asshole boss? I guess like everything else in life, it's all relative.
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