Happy Birthday To You

Couple of things I heard recently that made me laugh.

"When we come into The Program it's like we're driving a station wagon full of all of our shit. Then we slam on the brakes.  And all the shit comes forward suddenly and forcefully, all at once."

"My mind is like a dryer full of tennis shoes."  This is a good image.  All the noise and banging and clanging of big shoes ricocheting around the inside of a stainless steel drum, going nowhere.

Where I got sober we celebrated anniversaries with coins - here we celebrate birthdays with chips.

I went to the business meeting yesterday that serves as a clearinghouse for any issues that impact all of our 7AM meetings.  We're probably talking an attendance of 400+ people a week in these seven meetings. We get maybe 12 people at the business meeting, which is about average and not at all surprising.  The meetings are a big ball of contention and irritation.  Tempest in a teapot.  I never used to attend business meetings because I would get so annoyed at the trivial bullshit but I recently decided what better way to learn how to deal with trivial bullshit - and trivial to me, by the way, and obviously not to a lot of other people - than by putting myself into the Den of Trivial Bullshit.

At our last business meeting we finally decided to introduce a three minute timer into the meeting as some of our members enjoy the sound of their own voices quite a lot and to the detriment of others who might want to talk.  This topic consumed the time and energy that the government might expend say totally revising the tax code.  People were passionate.  There were some hard feelings when we voted the timer in, especially by the people who tend to talk too long.

Yesterday the big controversy was over cake.  I am not making this up.  The 7AM groups have a Cake Person who is responsible for bringing a cake for any member who wants to celebrate a Program milestone a little more formally.  It's a nice tradition, I think.  People get to gather around a few of their closest allies, blow out a candle, and then briefly tell everyone about their journey.  It's not bragging - it's gratitude.

What could go wrong with this?   Well, let me tell you, a lot can go wrong.  First of all, there was some uncertainty as to who the cake person was even though it's announced every morning.  And what if the cake person isn't there?  Then who do you ask about providing a cake?  Moreover, what if someone just decides to bring an ancillary cake to be nice?  We have a new woman who's a chef who makes these amazing cakes because she is going a little nuts with all of the newly found free time she has.  Being a guy who loves early morning, excellent, free cake I assure her that there is a special place in heaven carved out for her.

The Midwesterner in me wanted to suggest that if you wanted a birthday cake then you should go buy your own fucking cake and quit bitching that someone else wasn't doing it.

I don't think there was much objection to the fact that there's an extra cake.  But some people thought that the anniversary cake should receive precedence over the secondary cake.  The anniversary cake is brought into the meeting room from the kitchen for the presentation, adorned with a burning candle and accompanied by a variation of the Happy Birthday Song, adapted for a Program celebration - it's then cut up and offered around during the course of the meeting to anyone who wants a piece. Some people didn't like the fact that the extra cake might get the same consideration.  It was decided that if you wanted to bring cake that wasn't birthday cake then you should just leave it in the kitchen where anyone who wanted a piece could go serve themselves, like animals.  DO NOT dishonor the real birthday cake by carrying a tray around to deliver non-birthday cake to celebrants.  I should point out that the cake that the chef makes beats the hell out of the store-bought cake.  

I could take no more.

"If there's any cake left over after the meeting I'll take care of it," I said.  I thought I was being pretty fucking funny.  Not everyone did.  I am not making this up.  A few people pointedly disagreed with me, which I thought was even fucking funnier.

I'm not sure how things ended up.  I'm really not.