Only in Alcoholics Anonymous

 There have been so many "only in Alcoholics Anonymous" moments in my life I've lost count.  There have been so many instances where I've learned a valuable lesson by having life tossed in my face.  I rarely learn anything unless the lesson is screamed directly in my ear with an amplified bullhorn and even then I miss the point most of the time.  

One of the things that irks me about A.A. these days is that some people use their cell phones during the meeting.  I know that we're all so fucking important that we can't go an hour without engaging with a virtual community.  Omigod, I might miss something on Facebook!  I thought the reason to come to a meeting was to engage with an actual community but I'm off the mark frequently.  Because I am hard pressed to come up with even a couple of instances in my life where something happened that needed my attention right then, right now, rather than twenty minutes later, I'm offended by this behavior.  I realize that part of this bias is due to the fact I didn't grow up glued to screens like younger generations but I see a lot of people my own age behaving the same way.  I suspect the real reason is that our brains are being addled by the access to unlimited amounts of information immediately.  Technology companies are very clever in their abilities to keep us coming back for more, more, more.

Anyway, a few years back I started to nudge anyone who was using their cellphone during the meeting and suggest that they pocket the device.  I only did this to people sitting right next to me - I find it distracting when someone is clacking away on their phone instead of . . . you know . . . listening to other members share which is . . . I believe . . . why we come to the meetings. There are plenty of virtual meetings you can attend if you want to do twenty-seven other things at the same time.   This always produced the exact same result - the suggestion that I mind my own fucking business.  Fair enough.  I was sticking my neck out and I knew it so I took these assaults with pretty good humor or a ton of perspective, anyhow.

Willie said that his approach was to ask the info addict to put away the phone because he found it very distracting.  I thought this was a much kinder approach so I tried it once with a guy I've known for a long time and got along with just fine.  I could see he was playing a game, for god's sake, so I knew it wasn't anything important.  He looked at me, smirked, and held the phone up in my face and continued to play the game for a while longer.

I never saw him again until recently when he took a chip as a newcomer.  I took no pleasure in this but I also wasn't surprised.  I chatted with him briefly a couple of times.  He didn't seem to have any recollection of the incident that I found so incendiary.

Then he asked me to be his sponsor.  You cannot make this stuff up.