Reminiscing

I was talking on social media to an old friend from The Old City last night, a guy who got sober about the same time I did.  Like most of my friends who live far away I don't talk to him frequently but we stay in touch.  Like most of my old friends who got sober at about the same time I did we share a unique bond - we can pick up on a conversation as if no time has passed, with a tone and an ease that I find remarkable.  There truly is a sense that I'm chatting with someone who was there with me in the same sinking, bullet-riddle lifeboat lo these many years ago.

When I logged off I reminisced a bit about a couple of New Year's Eves that the two of us and our spouses spent together many years ago.  We've both stayed sober and are still married to the same person that we married in sobriety.  That's a terrible sentence.  We're not married to the same person, of course, because bigamy or whatever the hell that would be called is illegal everywhere but Florida.  We married different people - to the best of my knowledge - and each of us is still married to the person that we individually yet differently married.

Sigh.  I've totally forgotten what I was trying to say.

The point is: we've come a long way, baby.  We've been able to sustain important relationships and hold onto nice possessions and stay out of jail, and he's raised two fine sons.  This was not going to be our fate had we continued to drink.

I have always been jealous of one of his Here's-Why-I-Came-To-The-Fellowship stories, though. To the best of my recollection: "I stopped by a restaurant to pick up some food while thoroughly, absolutely, and completely drunk.  There was a policeman there who made a comment that it would be very, very bad to get behind the wheel of a car if I had been drinking.  With a straight face I said "I'll be alright" before getting back in my car and attempting to drive away.  I made it approximately 25 yards before the lights came on and I was arrested for a DUI."

And we thought the cops weren't trying to help us out.