Where I Belong

 I had pre-decided on Saturday that I was just going to listen and not open my mouth.  I talk too often as it is and rarely have anything coherent to say.  It's amazing that when you don't spend all of your time thinking about what you're going to say and preparing your brilliant remarks you can hear some good stuff.  The topic was Gratitude and people shared anecdotes about how grateful they are that they're no longer doing some of the stupid shit they did when they drank.

One guy used to sneak sips of wine and covered up his tracks by putting red food coloring in a glass of water and topping the bottle off until one time he drunkenly used green food coloring so that at the next meal his wife poured them each a glass of green wine.

Another guy talked about doing some research on the medicine that a veterinarian had prescribed for his dog - his dog, for god's sake - and decided that he could maybe, possible get off if he took it.

It made me think of a friend of mine who was a shipyard supervisor who would periodically use a company car to cruise around the site to check on the progress of various jobs.  A friend flagged him down one morning: "Mike, what are you doing?"  Turns out he had his company-issued polo shirt on inside out and that was the best thing about his appearance.  He also had on a pair of glasses that was missing one of the lenses and apparently the night before - when he was driving around in a black out in a company car - he threw up without bothering to get out of the car, leaving streaks of dried vomit running down the side of the car.

Yeah, we were fooling everybody.

It made me offer a brief observance: "When I was drinking if you had told me that my choices were to get up at 6 AM on a Saturday to drive to a 7 AM meeting where we'd talk about spiritual matters or to take some pills prescribed for a dog I wouldn't have hesitated to make my choice."

This is how I know I'm where I belong.