Put Your A*s in the Chair and Leave Your Head Outside – Barney M.

Good evening. My name is Barney, and I'm an alcoholic.
And I guess we're having an AA meeting here.
A little larger than most of the meetings that we go to, but it's still an AA meeting.
A bunch of drunks trying to stay sober together.
And so far it's working for me. I haven't had a drink since I walked in here.
I am particularly privileged to be able to participate in this San Diego Roundup for a number of reasons.
One, because when this Roundup started 15 years ago,
the San Diego Roundup was a big deal for me.
The San Diego Roundup was a big deal for me.
The first two or three years I had small involvements here.
I did a couple little jobs. I was living in San Diego at the time.
And I remember Stu and Harriet W. were active then, as they are now, in conventions and conferences.
And, well, don't give them too much juice, because they just...
I wouldn't mind, but they bow for a long time, and I only get an hour, you know.
But they are dear friends of mine, and I love them very much, and they know that.
And then I moved to Los Angeles, back up to the L.A. area,
and have not been involved in this Roundup except a few years coming down for the Sunday morning breakfast.
And now I'm here.
And now, primarily because several guys I sponsor are active in this Roundup,
I'm standing here talking to you.
A lot of nepotism going on here.
But I'm very proud of the guys that I sponsor who have become very active here,
because I like to surround myself with activists and Alcoholics Anonymous.
I have long since come to believe that activism is the thing that keeps me going
and keeps me sober.
Participation in my own sobriety, if you will.
And so I love to be around people who do that.
And my sponsor is one of the most active people I know in AA.
I can never in the world be as active as he is, and his sponsor is more active than he is.
And constantly doing stuff in AA and keeping moving and being involved and sponsoring people
and talking.
And I always think...
I always think the coffee maker is the most important job.
I've been the coffee maker at my home group in La Jolla this year.
I drive down from Orange County every Saturday night to make coffee at that meeting.
That's how important I think it is for me.
And I always think it's just a, when I pass Oceanside, I know it's about 12 miles beyond any lengths every Saturday.
But, you know, you can have a meeting without a speaker because AA is full of speakers.
I mean, this room is full of speakers.
And you can have a meeting without a secretary because sometimes we do.
But it's hard to have a meeting without coffee.
Alcoholics will not put up with that.
So you've got to have a coffee maker, and that's a job that I always love to have.
But if you're new here tonight, just out of curiosity, how many people in the room have,
one year or less of sobriety?
How many?
Now that's interesting.
Is this side of the room no smoking?
They're all over here.
Isn't that interesting?
But I'm going to tell you something.
Hang in with them cigarettes because I did for a lot of years.
Don't give them up right away, MS.
Hang in there with that stuff.
But that's interesting, isn't it?
But anyway, I just love to be part of Alcoholics Anonymous today.
I love to be involved in meetings at AA, and I love to be around the people that I know at AA.
And there's so many here in this room that I've known over the years.
Who have become very good friends of mine.
And it's not like the Kiwanis Club or the Rotary or something where you really get to know people very slowly and over a long period of time.
Here you get to know every wart and every hangnail and every rotten thing they ever did right away.
I don't know what it is about people like us, but we love to tell people our rottenness secrets after we've been here for...
You know, once you've done the fourth step, you can't stop.
You know, it's just...
Let me tell you about that sheep in Utah.
They just can't wait to just...
My wife told me tonight, by the way, my wife is sitting here, and she calls me the newcomer because she's sober about three years longer than I am.
And she told me as we got out of the room tonight, she said, I don't want any swearing tonight.
No swearing.
I said, okay.
Because I have a character defect, and it's my mom.
And for a long time, it was very difficult for me to talk in AA without running four-letter words through it.
And I try very hard not to do that now.
So if you catch me doing it tonight, just forgive me.
I'm trying.
But I am a firm believer, as my sponsor is, that it's a good idea to try to clean up my act in every way that I can in AA.
And that's one of the ways that I need to do it.
I used to drink a lot.
In case I forget to mention that.
I used to drink a lot.
And I enjoyed it.
I liked it.
Drinking was a wonderful experience for me.
But it never occurred to me, never dawned on me over the years that I drank that I could possibly be an alcoholic.
I just really...
I didn't believe that.
Even after I had several years of pretty strong evidence that I didn't drink very successfully,
I continued to battle the notion that I might have a problem with it, or that I might have a disease,
or that I might have to, you know, stay in these dingy rooms for the rest of my life.
That was not a prospect that appealed to me at all.
And even after I got to AA for a long time, I fought the notion that I was alcoholic.
So if you're new here tonight, or even in your first early months of sobriety,
and you're still struggling with that notion of,
you know, maybe I'm here by mistake.
You know, maybe I'm not really alcoholic like they're alcoholic.
That's perfectly all right.
Because I was just sort of alcoholic for a long time.
And could give you any number of reasons why I didn't believe that I was really alcoholic.
I just, the only trouble is that when I drink, I look alcoholic.
So a lot of people make that mistake.
I really believe that.
And I traded on that one in my own brain for a long time here.
So if you're having that problem of trying to decide if you're an AA,
although there's a friend of mine who has a test about that.
You know, he says the 20 questions are fine, but he's got a better way to figure out if you're alcoholic.
He said, I've got one question.
And if you answer this one question, yes, you're definitely an alcoholic,
and you're definitely in the right place.
And he said, the question is,
I'm an alcoholic.
Are you now, or have you ever been, in a meeting of alcoholics and others?
Because social drinkers just hardly ever come here.
You know, I haven't met anybody in AA who said,
gee, I got up this morning and I felt so good.
It was such a wonderful day, just a beautiful spring day.
I thought I'd just bounce down to a meeting of AA.
See what was going on there.
I just hardly ever run into people like that.
Most people, like me, came in here not wanting to be here,
kicking and screaming, just hating the idea of having to be in AA.
And I suspect most of the people that are here had that terrible feeling about it when they came.
I mean, based on the talks I've heard,
nobody was really that overjoyed about walking into the meetings of AA,
because this is not Sunday.
I mean, I thought, really, I'd come into the leper colony when I came here.
And I had no intention of staying very long.
My intention was to stay for a period of time.
And I'll tell you why in a minute.
But my intention was to stay for a short period of time
and kind of see what was going on
and try to sort of see what you were doing
and get some idea of what this thing was all about.
And then get the hell out of here.
Because, truly, I didn't believe that I was alcoholic.
I had been far too successful in my life.
I had done far too many things.
I was too bright.
I was too articulate.
For Christ's sake, I voted.
How could I be an alcoholic?
How could I be an alcoholic?
So I just could not believe it.
I was perfectly willing to admit to anybody as I say
that I drank funny.
And I looked a little funny sometimes when I drank.
And I did some peculiar and bizarre things when I drank.
And I got drunk a lot.
Sure, I knew that.
But as far as having a disease,
as far as having something that was incurable,
as far as being so bad
that I couldn't drink anymore.
No.
I'm not that bad.
I just knew that I was true.
I had a lot of funny feelings about life.
I had funny feelings about myself and about other people
and about my role in this world,
whatever the hell it was supposed to be.
And that kid's an alcoholic.
I just know it.
I just know it.
I just had this peculiar notion about
about what life was all about
and about what my role was supposed to be
and what I was supposed to do.
I had good education.
I grew up in Chicago on the south side
in an Irish Catholic neighborhood.
And I went to grammar school
with the Dominican nuns for eight years.
And I'm sure that those nuns
tried their darndest.
To give me a set of standards
and values to live by,
some rules and regulations
that would allow me to be happy
and live a comfortable life.
I know that's what they were doing.
I didn't know it then.
All I knew then was that they were trying to tell me
what to do.
And I just react funny when people do that.
I know nobody in this room understands that,
but I have a funny reaction when people do that.
And I went to high school with the Carmelite fathers
for four years at Mount Carmel High School in Chicago.
And they spent four years, I know,
trying to work hard to give me some values
and some kind of definition of life
and some standards to live by
that would allow me to live comfortable and happy
inside my own skin.
I didn't know that.
I thought they were just cracking down on me.
I went to the University of Notre Dame
and the Holy Cross fathers spent time
trying to teach me some values
and some standards to live by.
And taught me, tried desperately to teach me
how to be a man and how to understand myself
and my life and my role and what it was all about
and my relationship to God.
And I rejected it because I, by that time,
had decided that I was at best an agnostic
and probably an atheist.
And the reason I believe that is because
in the churches that I had gone to,
I had gone to confession
and I had seen the other people go to confession
and somehow I knew,
and I don't ask me why,
but I knew they were getting something I wasn't getting.
They believed something that I didn't believe.
I couldn't get it.
Matter of fact,
if in my entire life I could have
sort of explained to you
what was going on with me,
I would have just carried a sign around.
And when you came up to me
and you said anything to me,
I would just hold the sign up
and the sign would say,
I don't get it!
Because that's the way I felt about most things.
It was like,
I don't understand.
How to be a man.
How to be a husband.
How to be a father.
How to be a friend.
How to be an employee.
How to be anything.
I don't get it.
When they gave out the information,
I missed it somewhere.
Other people had the information.
I didn't have it.
So I grew up with a sense of frustration
because I felt like a sinner.
I felt not only like a sinner,
I knew somehow instinctively
that I was a moral leper.
That's somebody who not only sins a lot,
but somebody who enjoys it thoroughly.
And I knew you were supposed to like it that much.
And I walked around thinking,
oh God, you know,
how can I be this way?
What's wrong with me?
Even as a teenager.
I remember thinking that.
And knowing that somehow
if the world is divided
between the good and the bad,
between the good and the bad,
between the good and the bad,
between the good people and the bad people,
I know where I fit.
And it ain't with the good ones.
And if there's a God, I'm screwed.
So let's just forget about that.
Let's just get on with this business
of doing stuff that's going to make me happy.
And I spent a number of years of my life
working hard with the goal of making me happy.
I tried hard to do that.
And that was pointed out to me by my sponsor
when I was new at AA.
He said, Jesus, Barney, you're 35 years old.
And for 35 years,
you tried to be happy.
And you failed.
Who the hell cares what you think?
I hear people in AA even today say,
Hey, baby, you do your own thing.
Well, I'll tell you what.
If I did my own thing, I'd be grouch.
That was my thing.
How the hell does any newcomer know anything?
That's the problem with being a newcomer.
Everybody seems to know more than you do.
And you resent the hell out of us.
What do you mean, go to a meeting every day?
I don't have to do that crap.
Who are you to tell me?
I know. I understand.
But I had to get a hold of the notion somehow
that the best intelligence that I had,
the best wisdom that I had all of my life
applied to the goal of making me happy
had failed.
and I just didn't do it, because at 35 I was a very unhappy guy,
and I was lonely, and I was frightened, and I was crazy,
and I didn't know what the hell was the matter, and I'd blown a marriage already,
and I just didn't know what the hell was wrong, and I'd spent all my money.
I made a lot of money.
I had a successful career for a number of years.
I was a television newscaster for a number of years.
By the time I was 26, I was the anchorman for a television station owned by ABC in Detroit,
and I was making a lot of money, and I was being very successful,
and I looked pretty good on the outside.
And I was being asked by people to come to New York
and to explain to guys that we called the suits,
the guys in Madison Avenue who sat in the ABC Tower in New York,
and wore those pinstripe suits.
We said, we're going to go talk to the suits.
And we'd go there and we'd talk to them,
because we had great friends.
We had great ratings in Detroit.
Nobody in ABC could figure out why.
We were the only station in the system at that time that had good ratings.
And we went to New York.
The other guy and I had anchored the news there, and we were young guys.
I was 26, 27.
He was 28 or 29.
We didn't know anything.
We went to New York, and they had a room full of suits.
There'd be maybe 300 of them there.
Madison Avenue guys, general managers, sales managers from lots of stations around the country,
they come in.
And we would stand there and we would tell them how we got those great ratings in Detroit.
And we had no idea.
And they took notes.
And you people were watching the product that they produced!
Did I get anything?
?
?
?
?
?
?
the world by the ass. We were making a lot of money. We were successful. God, we thought
it would never end. You never do when you're that age. You just never think it's going
to end. And by the time I was, oh, I don't know, 30, 31, 32, I was in California, still
working in television, still wondering why I was successful, not really knowing, still
trying to accumulate as much stuff as I could as fast as I could because I somehow had conjured
up the notion that my definition of success was going to be the accumulation of stuff
and that's how I'd know I was okay. I mean, how the hell do you know if you're out there
in the world trying to make it? How do you know you're all right? How do you know you're
successful?
Well, let me tell you.
You got a lot of stuff. How else do you know? And more important, how do they know? I show
them my stuff. Yeah, it's true. How you doing, Barney? Look at my stuff. Ooh, great car,
yeah, see? Great house, yeah. Everything's BV stereo. All the stuff I can get, all the
clothes I can get, all the stuff I can get that will finally allow me to feel complete
and successful and okay and together. And for some damn reason, it didn't work. I never
felt good. I felt frightened. Now, there's a beauty. Here I am, a rather large man in
a rather successful career, in a rather lovely home.
I had a five-bedroom house overlooking the San Fernando Valley with a swimming pool and
had it all. Sit out there at night, just get drunk and watch the lights fade.
I had a lot of stuff. Looked like I should have been okay, but I was frightened. What
the heck? What the heck? What the heck? What the heck? What the heck? What the heck? What
the hell was I afraid of? I don't know. I don't know. And I don't know how to tell
anybody because psychiatry wasn't real big in my neighborhood when I grew up. And I don't
know how to tell anybody how I feel. I've never learned how to do that. What I've learned,
and I don't know where I got this information either, what I've learned is that a man doesn't
talk about how he feels. If you're frightened, for God's sake, don't let anybody know it!
Be a man!
And I don't know how to do that. I tried most of my life to look okay. When they said in
AA, when I got here, they said, you've got to fake it until you make it. I know how to
do that. Because I'm an expert. I'm the biggest phony I know. I am an expert at looking good.
I know how to do that. I know how to look like I got it together. I know how to look
okay. And besides, what the hell are you going to do? Are you going to get some points? Are
you going to get some points out there for being honest? What are you going to do? You
wake up one morning, and you're a successful anchorman, and things are going okay. And
you get up, and you're just hungover, and you feel bad because you just kind of overshot
the mark again. And you get up, and you're just trying to stagger around, and you get
the shower, and you get the clothes on, and you know you can't go back and face them one
more time, and try to look good again, but you've got to do it. Because somehow they
expect it of you.
Shut up!
You show up every day, even if you don't feel like it. So you walk in there, and the
boss is coming through the door, and he says, how are you doing, Barney? Look at him and
say, well, I'm afraid. He said, what are you afraid of? I said, I don't beat the shit
out of me.
Kind of that way most of the time. I just woke up that way this morning. And I'm afraid
of you, and I'm afraid of your bosses, and I'm afraid of the people around me, and I'm
afraid of life and the world. And I'm afraid somebody's going to find out I'm not half
as bright as I'm supposed to be, or half as good-looking as I'm supposed to be, or half
as anything as I'm supposed to be. And somebody's going to find out a lot of things about me,
and I'm not going to like it too much. I'm scared to death of my wife finding out where
the hell I was last night, and half the time I can't remember where I was last night. And
I can't remember where I was last night. No, no, the answer is, hi, I'm fine, how are
you? That's the answer. You walk into a newsroom full of producers and bright people from some
of the finest universities in the country, great writers, great thinkers, people full
of ideas, and you're the anchorman, and you sit down, and they look at you and say, hey,
how's it going, Barney? You say, well, I have a deep-seated sense of inadequacy.
I don't think I sit here very well. I feel so dumb, and I just feel stupid, and I hate
you people. I think I'll smack about six of you, and then I'm leaving, because I need
a drink so bad I can't even drink.
I can't even explain it to you. And that's another thing. I was surrounded by people
who never understood that. I discovered somewhere in my middle 20s, really, I made the magic
discovery that every alcoholic sooner or later has to make, and it's so simple. I found out
when I drink, I feel better. Wow! Isn't that interesting? Nobody ever wrote a poem about
it or put a plaque on it.
Nobody ever wrote a poem about it. Nobody ever put a plaque on a wall or anything. It's
just something that happened. I just found that out. If I feel bad and I drink, I feel
better. If I feel good and I drink, I feel better. The damnedest thing. Always works.
Now, my tendency, when anything feels that good, is to do it a lot. If spinach made me
feel that good, I'd buy a spinach farm, I guess, and just lay there in the middle of
the field and just...
And I'm sure well-meaning people would come along sooner or later,
and they'd say, Barney, you know, you're eating a lot of spinach.
Oh, yeah, I know.
It's good, though.
It's good.
It makes me feel good.
Well, it's really ruining your life because you're not doing anything else.
You're just laying there, and your family's kind of going to hell,
and you're not going to work, and you're just eating spinach.
And actually, you're turning a little green.
Well, it's just a few more mouthfuls, and I'll be right along.
And after a while, they just walk out of the field and leave me there.
And that's pretty much what happened to me in my life.
I mean, when I was 35, my wife decided to divorce me.
Now, we'd had six children.
And I had this conversation.
I had this kind of Catholic thing in the back of my head.
You just don't get divorced no matter what.
That was another one of the rules.
And I just, you know, I haven't been inside a church in 15 years,
but I think I'm Catholic, right?
And I'm just, give them to me until they're seven, baby, and then I got them.
That's the truth.
And whatever was going on in my head was really goofy,
and my wife told me that she thought I was an alcoholic.
And I know that I'm not an alcoholic.
I'm not an alcoholic because alcohol makes me feel better.
Alcohol makes me feel better.
It can't be the problem.
The problem is people.
The problem is life.
The problem is I don't have enough money.
I don't have enough stuff.
If I could just get some stuff.
But the problem is not drinking.
I know in my heart it's not drinking.
From time to time over the years, just to kind of take the heat off,
I had quit drinking.
I had gone on the wagon.
I know how to do that.
I quit drinking.
I just stopped drinking.
A lot of times.
I'd go a week, week and a half, no booze.
I'd go to work every day.
Put your nose to the grindstone.
All you get is a sharp nose.
And you say, oh.
Go home and take out the garbage and cut the grass
and take the kids to Y-Indian guides and Little League.
I can't hit a baseball and I can't make a totem pole.
But I'll do it.
Look bad in front of the other fathers.
And do all this stuff because that's what normal people do, I guess.
And I'm not drinking.
I'm behaving myself.
And I'm shaping up.
Now, I'm not drinking.
And about a week later, I'm just crazy.
Because I'm so nervous and anxiety-ridden and frustrated, I can't see straight.
And that's about the time, you know, somebody walks up to you and says,
oh, you look so good.
The puffiness has gone out of your face and you're just,
your eyes are not so red now.
So wonderful you're coming home with your family at night.
And you just want to rip out their jugular veins.
Because they don't understand.
They don't get it.
They're social drinkers, for God's sake.
And they know how to explain it to them.
And so after about a week and a half of frustration and anger and pain and fear,
it happens.
And it's getting better.
A week and a half of inadequacy, a week and a half of the bills piling up,
a week and a half of the kids screaming, a week and a half of the wife getting on my ass,
a week and a half of the pressure I have at work,
a week and a half of more problems than anybody really needs.
My mind tells me one night it's time to have a little fun.
After all, I've been good long enough.
I gave them theirs, now they've got to give me mine.
I'm going to have a few laughs.
Just going to have two or three drinks, then I'm going home.
And so I go out and have two or three drinks, and I feel really good.
And I wonder what the hell I waited so long for.
And so I have some more.
And then I have a tendency, here's the sad part about it, it's the damnedest thing.
I have a tendency when I drink to,
to kind of forget things.
I forget where I am.
I forget where my car is.
I forget how, well, see, just as an example,
because I travel a lot when I drink, too.
Sometimes it's just bar to bar, and that's safe enough.
Sometimes it's from city to city, and you can deal with that.
But when it's country to country,
it gets a little embarrassing.
One time I woke up in the Miami airport, for example,
on a Saturday afternoon, and the last thing I could remember
was sitting in a bar in Detroit on Friday night having a couple of drinks.
I have no idea why I went to Miami.
I think I was going to Jamaica.
But I don't know why I went to Miami,
and I didn't know where I was,
because all airports tend to look pretty much alike.
And you don't want to ask.
It's a very lonely feeling.
So if it ever happens to you,
try the newspaper rack.
I finally figured that out.
And the trouble is, in Miami, they have a lot of Washington Post and New York Times and all that.
But they have a lot of Miami Heralds.
And besides, I walked outside, and it was warm, and it was February.
So it was a fair shot that I was at least not in Chicago, you know.
Then you get home,
and you have to explain it.
The question always is, where have you been?
Why are you doing this to your family?
And I really don't know.
When I was 35, she divorced me,
and I was hurt, and I was embarrassed,
and I was frustrated, and I didn't know what the hell to do.
And I just looked at her, and I said,
well, I don't understand.
I don't understand this divorce,
and I don't understand why you're doing this.
But I'll tell you one thing.
I am going to demand custody of the six children.
And she said, well, you can have them.
And she left.
She left.
Some son of a bitch took her to Al-Anon.
And I really felt puzzled by life.
I mean, what the hell's going on?
And the oldest child was 12, and the youngest one was a year.
And we went to court, and the house was ordered sold by the judge,
and the two lawyers split what was left.
And I hated lawyers for a long time.
I had a hell of a resentment against lawyers.
One of them was a member of AA.
Hers, not mine.
And I really had a resentment against lawyers for a long time.
I get my revenge now, though I sponsor one.
You can bet he's working his steps.
But here I am, you know, 35 years old.
I've had this successful career.
I don't know what the hell's the matter.
I don't know what's happened in my life.
I rented a little apartment in Santa Monica, and I took my six kids, and we went over there.
And I'm still working, still hanging on to this job with my fingernails,
trying to figure out what the hell's the matter.
Because the people at ABC were looking at me funny because I had this reputation for being a drunk.
I don't know where the hell that came from.
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair.
I knew a lot of people that drank.
And somehow I always seemed to get the brunt of the heat.
Everybody always blamed me.
They're always pointing their fingers at me.
What about the other ones?
But life was never fair to me.
And I knew that, and I felt really hurt by life because I'm so extraordinarily sensitive.
I feel things more deeply than everybody I know.
What the hell?
If I hurt your feelings, I hurt your feelings.
It's just no big deal, okay?
If you hurt me, you kill me.
You just absolutely destroy me.
You have to be careful.
You have to treat me special.
You must treat me special for me to feel equal.
Because if you treat me like everybody else, I will feel like you're screwing me.
And sooner or later, I'll get revenge.
And you won't even know why.
I just have this peculiar feeling about life and about people that's the damnedest thing.
And I don't know what you do about that.
I don't know when the problem is that you're just, I don't know, you've been trying all your life
and you seem not to be able to be successful on a sustaining basis.
When you try to be good and you know that you're bad.
When you try to be successful and you're kind of a failure.
Not really successful the way I want to be successful.
When you try to be successful and you're kind of a failure.
When you try to be successful and you know that you're bad.
When you try to be successful and you're kind of a failure.
When you try to be successful the way I want to be successful.
When you try to be successful the way I want to be successful.
When you try to be successful the way I want to be successful.
try to be a good father and you can only handle that for about three days and then you're
crazy. And you try to be a good husband and you just can't deal with that one at all.
And you're trying to be a good neighbor and your neighbors hate you because you never
cut your grass. You can always sell an alcoholic lawn when you drive by. Go in any neighborhood,
the alcoholic lawns are that high. It's the way it is. And I don't know when you just
I don't know when you haven't been given enough information about life and somebody
is suggesting to you that you have a drinking problem and you know that's not true because
you feel good when you drink and if you stay sober too long you get crazy. That's a sobriety
problem. And I don't know where the hell you're supposed to go with that. Go down to a meeting
of sobriety's anonymous. I don't know where that is.
And I got drunk of course because of the shape that my life was in and the way things were going.
What the hell else would I do? I got drunk and I suddenly in the middle of the night
I came to in an apartment over in Marina Del Rey that was a long way from where my apartment was
in Santa Monica and it suddenly dawned on me in the middle of the night that my six kids were home
alone.
And I thought, Jesus, you can't do this. You can't do this anymore. You've got to do something.
You've got to get your act together. You've got to get some money going here. You've got to get
your bills paid. I owed about $80,000, $90,000. I don't know. It was a lot of money. And I don't
know how the hell to pay it. Some of it was dead money. That's when you owe for stuff that doesn't
even exist anymore. Not fair. You've got to write a check. Jesus, that's not fair.
And I just, it dawned on me in the middle of the night that I just was, I had to do something.
I wish that I were alcoholic. I wish it were that simple. I wish I could just, you know,
run down to one of them A&A meetings and just feel wonderful. But my problems were
much deeper than that. And I, I was too much of a thinker. I understood pain. I understood
evil.
And there, you know, other people seem not to see things the way I saw them. And I don't
know what the hell you're supposed to do. And people suggest that I quit drinking. Jesus,
if I quit drinking, I will commit suicide because it's the only time I feel good at
all. Yeah, you tell them. Hope it's a better one than we're over here.
They got a speaker over here that's just really out of his mind.
I called a guy that I knew was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous because I knew that I
could just kind of talk to this guy. He had told me some months before that he was a member
of AA. And I said, you know, I'm not alcoholic. You understand that? I've explained that to
you before.
You see, that's, I know social drinkers call me all the time at 3 a.m. at 3 p.m. at 3 p.m.
at 3 o'clock in the morning.
What do you want?
I said, well, I thought if I could just
kind of talk to you a little bit.
I mean, you haven't had a drink in a long time.
He said, four and a half years.
I said, ooh.
I said, well, my case is not that bad.
I only need about, I need maybe six months.
You know what I mean?
And just, that'll be fine.
And then I'll be okay.
Then I'll go about my business.
But you can just talk to me and tell me
what is it you do to not drink?
And he said, well, I go to meetings.
I said, well, okay, but I can't do that.
He said, well, it's the only way that I know.
I said, well, I thought maybe we'd just talk.
You know, you could kind of explain to me.
And he said, this is not an intellectual exercise, Barney.
He said, there's no chapter in our book
entitled Why It Works.
Why It Works.
You can't get this thing with your mind.
You cannot think your way to good living.
You must act your way to good thinking.
If he says it twice, it's probably important.
You cannot think your way to good living.
You must act your way to good thinking.
And that didn't make any sense to me.
And I said, Jesus, I don't know what you're talking about.
He said, I know, but you've got to go to these meetings.
And finally I agreed and we went to the meetings.
And I wasn't thrilled about the meetings.
We went in the Beverly Hills men's stag.
That was the first meeting we went to.
A bunch of guys sitting around
all laughing and talking and carrying.
I don't know what the hell was going on in there.
And then they have the meeting
and then they call these guys up
and they all talk about three or four minutes.
And they all seem to just be so thrilled to be there.
And they've got some horror stories that they tell
and some of their stuff's pretty funny.
Some of these guys did prison time.
Some of these guys did a lot of psych time,
a lot of nut houses.
Some of these guys were real alcoholics.
You can see by looking at them.
Laughter
Laughter
As my sponsor often says, they'd say,
I was out there for a long time
and you can tell by looking at them
they've been somewhere for a long time.
Jesus.
And then with some degree of flair,
this guy thrust this book into my hands.
I went up here every night, but anyway.
Here's the other one.
Alcoholics Anonymous.
He says, here, I bought you a book.
What the hell for?
Laughter
I don't want your book.
I don't want your literature.
I don't want to be here.
I'm not going to join up.
Don't put me on the membership list.
I'm not interested in being any of this stuff.
I just want to stop drinking for a little while
and then I'll get the hell out of here.
And so, I would come to meetings.
He insisted every day.
And that made no sense to me to go to a meeting every day.
I said, I don't drink every day.
And he said, it doesn't make any difference.
Go to a meeting every day.
Just do what I tell you to do.
And he was such a nice guy.
And I thought, well, okay.
I go along with the gag.
So, I go to a meeting every day.
And the book I took home
and I kind of flipped through it
and I wasn't too excited about it.
First of all, I'm bright enough to read
the fact that the book has been published in 1939.
Pretty old stuff.
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Gotta be more modern thinking than that.
There have to be some university studies they've overlooked.
And then you start reading about the guys.
They got pictures hanging on the wall and you say,
who are they?
Oh, those are our founders.
Oh, really?
You start checking into them a little bit.
I mean, I'm a journalist.
I know how to check things out.
These two guys.
Laughter
Come on.
One of them is a broken-down stockbroker from New York
who never even got rich after he got sober.
Laughter
The other guy
is a babbling idiot doctor from Akron, Ohio.
Proctologist, by the way.
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
I don't want to say what he was doing, but the patient was on his stomach.
Laughter
I don't think I can do this, Bill.
Laughter
Oh, it's all right, Bob.
Here, have a beer.
Oh, God.
Oh, that's all right.
Laughter
If you ever wanted to ask for another opinion, that would be the moment.
Laughter
Excuse me, doctor.
I, uh...
Laughter
I think I'm at a point, but I...
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
And it is this auspicious occasion,
a hemorrhoidectomy,
that marks the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Now, I'm a bright guy, right?
And I'm sitting in meetings, and I'm checking it out,
and I know what's going on,
and I'm sitting in meetings, and I think it's pretty funny.
Laughter
And these people are all going,
Oh, it's wonderful.
Oh.
And they come in these rooms every night, and they do the same thing.
They read the same part of the book like they can't remember it.
Laughter
Laughter
Oh, now here's Joe to read chapter five.
Oh, God.
Jesus, can't we read another chapter?
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Let's read something else.
Laughter
And then Joe gets through.
Oh, thank you, Joe.
Laughter
Jesus.
And now Melanie will do the traditions.
Oh, good.
Laughter
Laughter
And I'm sitting there going,
These people are out of their minds.
Laughter
Laughter
And I'm, see, my problem was,
I'm still broke.
I'm still living in this goofy apartment with these six kids.
I still got all these bills to pay.
And as I have already explained to you,
after I'm sober about a week, I don't feel good.
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
And I'm going out to coffee shops with these crazy people.
Laughter
Laughter
And the guy who became my sponsor used to say to me all the time,
Oh, Barney, everything's going to be all right.
Laughter
And I say, when?
Laughter
Because I'd like it now to be all right.
Well, just keep coming back.
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
He said,
I suggest you would.
Because I would intellectualize with him about the book.
I'd bring stuff up in the book, and I'd say, how does this make any sense?
I mean, this doesn't follow with this, and this doesn't relate to this,
and there's a lot of God stuff in here, and I don't like that.
And he said, well, I'll tell you what you need to do.
What you need to do is make coffee on Saturday night.
Laughter
Laughter
And I say, I don't understand.
He said, I know.
But do it anyway.
Make you feel a lot better.
Well, I didn't understand that.
And then I'd complain some more, and I became a floor mopper on Tuesday.
Laughter
And then I became a greeter on Wednesday night at Echo Park.
And I became, you know, just all these actions that he insisted that I take.
After I'd been around 30 days, and I was really nuts, really ready to kill somebody,
he said, oh, good, now we're going to have you pick up newcomers.
I said, I am a newcomer.
Laughter
He said, oh, no, these guys are newer than you.
And he had me go down to a couple of Skid Row hotels.
I don't like those neighborhoods to begin with.
And pick these guys up, and they're not my kind of guys, you know what I mean?
Laughter
I'm a television news anchorman, and I'm picking guys up in these crummy joints.
And what am I supposed to say to them?
AA don't work.
Laughter
I hate it.
Laughter
Laughter
The book is badly written.
The founders are a couple of losers.
They read the same crap every night.
They have no idea what they're doing, and they're all smoking, everybody's talking, and nobody's listening.
Laughter
My sponsor said, no, you just bring him to the meeting. We'll talk to him.
Laughter
Laughter
I went to meetings, and I went to meetings, and I went to meetings, and I mopped floors, and I made coffee until I was ready to throw up.
I greeted people.
Hi, my name is Barney, and I'm an alcoholic.
Didn't believe it for a minute.
Laughter
I hauled newcomers to meetings.
I got really active in AA.
And I hated it.
I hated every minute of it.
I hated every day of it.
I hated every ounce of it.
I hated speakers who were spiritual.
But I did have one spiritual experience.
I was about four months sober.
And this redhead walked by me one night.
Laughter
And I was inspired to get out of my chair.
Laughter
It was the days of miniskirts, and she had the greatest legs in North America.
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
And I'm chasing her all over the meeting.
Laughter
And she'd look at me, and she'd say,
I don't date newcomers.
Laughter
I'd say, well, I'm new now, but I'll be old later.
What the hell?
A little coffee.
What the...
Laughter
How can it hurt?
Laughter
One night, she looked at me, and she said, how many children do you have?
I said, I have six, but they're very small.
You'd hardly notice them.
They're just little...
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
So I chased her around the meetings, and it made it a lot more interesting for me.
Laughter
Now I don't care if they're reading chapter five.
It's fine with me.
Laughter
Laughter
Let's just sit next to the redhead.
Laughter
Laughter
And then it don't matter after that.
Laughter
Laughter
It starts getting real spiritual, and I have to sit there.
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
Laughter
And when I was seven months into this insanity, seven months, mind you, of not drinking, seven
months of going to bed.
Seven months of going to meetings.
Seven months of mopping floors, making coffee, picking up newcomers, trying to simulate interest
in what was going on around here, ready to make my move, incidentally, any minute.
But shove her!
I heard a guy talk one night, and I identified with him.
I didn't mean to.
It just happened.
Laughter
I was very surprised.
Laughter
I didn't identify with his drinking pattern.
This guy was a skid row derelict.
This guy was a man who left families in mailboxes all over the United States.
This was a guy who just couldn't hold on to a job.
This was a guy who was selling his blood in order to buy wine.
This was a guy who had his teeth kicked out in a Phoenix drunk tank.
I'd never even been in a drunk tank, except to do interviews.
But what I identified with was how this guy felt.
I identified with a series of emotions that he described that absolutely nailed me to the wall.
He talked about fear in a way I'd never heard it described before.
And he talked about a sense of inadequacy that I really understood.
And he talked about sensitivity, and I got it.
And he talked about feelings of not being good enough or being better than.
And he talked about a sense of not fitting into the world very well, wherever the hell he was.
It was going to be better over there.
And he went on and on and on, talking about me.
And he finally said, if you're walking around with a set of emotions anything like what I'm describing,
and you seem somehow unable to control and enjoy your drinking,
it turns out there's a name for that.
Oh, really?
It's a disease.
Oh.
It's called alcoholism.
Oh, shit.
So I went up to this guy after the meeting.
I said, Jesus, if what you're saying is true, I may be alcoholic.
He said, aren't you the guy that mops the floors on Tuesday?
I said, yeah.
He said, how long have you been here, kid?
I said, seven months.
He says, you're a real quick study.
He said, yeah.
But now I know I belong in AA.
Now I know I'm alcoholic.
I ain't happy about it, but I know.
So I'm stuck with this.
I've got to be with the lepers.
All right.
I'll go to their damn meetings.
I start reading the book a little bit now.
I start getting a little more interested in making the coffee.
I start, you know, feeling a little better about being there,
because now I know I've got a disease that will kill me.
When I was a year and a half sober,
a girl married me, and she had two children,
and we put these eight children together.
When I was two and a half years sober,
I got a huge job offer from CBS to go back east and work for them,
and my attitude at that time was, well,
I guess now that I'm sober, I'm going to get my stuff.
I guess sobriety now has put me in a position where I can really make things happen.
Hear what I said?
Where I can make things happen.
And I believe that.
And so I went back east, and I took this job,
and I was making a lot of money, and I discovered some things.
First of all, the AA back there wasn't up to my standards.
They were doing it different.
Can you imagine?
They did not read chapter five in their meetings.
Did not read the traditions.
Well, for heaven's sake.
How can you have an AA?
You can't have an AA meeting without that.
People get up and say, hi, my name is Al, and I'm an alcoholic.
And everybody just sits there.
They never say hi to the speaker.
And you feel like a goof.
You're the only one that does.
Hi, Al!
Must be one of them oddballs from California.
Steer clear of him.
I didn't like what was going on there,
and I decided I would do the only thing that any right-thinking egomaniac can do.
I pretty much denied them my presence.
I didn't like what was going on there.
I didn't go to their meetings.
I went to a few meetings here and there.
I started a meeting, California style.
We read chapter five and the traditions.
I wrote the format.
I picked the speakers.
I made the coffee.
I greeted everyone at the door.
I was the secretary of the group.
And I thought I was doing God's work.
I was on an ego trip that was just not even to be believed.
I got crazier and crazier and crazier as time went by,
because I'm not going to many meetings, and I'm working hard,
and I'm trying to be successful, and I'm trying to make a lot of money,
and I'm trying to be somebody, and it's just not working.
The ratings were not going up fast.
They were starting to look at me funny at CBS in New York.
My wife was beginning to...
She turned on me.
This alcoholic had some ideas of her own.
Began to explain to me that I wasn't her sponsor.
I was the only one in the house that knew truth,
and she would not listen.
She'd say, you're a newcomer.
Just shut up.
The children began to drink and use drugs,
which is no fun when you're a sober member of AA.
God knows everybody around you is supposed to shape up.
I was getting nervous and frustrated and full of pain,
and I didn't know what to do.
And a man that I knew from College Park, Maryland,
happened through Philadelphia one night.
Jerry's sponsor, it was.
And he knocked on my door, and he said, how you doing?
And I said, I'm doing terrible.
How are you?
He said, well, why don't you talk to me about it?
I said, you haven't got enough time.
He said, I've got lots of time.
We went by the living room, and we sat down,
and he said, what's going on in your life?
And I explained to him what a rotten life it was.
How I was trying to be a good member of AA.
I had started a meeting of alcoholics and honest.
You see, isn't that the one they call Barney's meeting?
I said, well, some others do.
I said, well, I've tried to be a good husband.
I have not cheated on this woman.
I've tried to be a good father.
I've given them counsel, and they don't listen.
They drink and use drugs.
I've tried to be a good employee,
and the ratings are not going up,
and things aren't going well,
and I may lose my job.
Now, what I'm looking for,
in those circumstances,
when my life is coming apart,
I expect anybody that I'm talking to
to give me some sympathy.
To say, God, Barney,
it's no wonder you're even sober
the way they're treating you.
Your life has been such a shambles.
They're just all screwing you, aren't they, again?
They're just, none of them are treating you right.
It's just terrible the way it's all working.
That's what he said.
He looked at me, and he said,
how many meetings do you go to?
I said, well,
it's not got to do with anything, Phil.
I'm sober.
I've been three and a half years sober.
I don't need meetings.
I need success.
He said, how many newcomers do you work with?
I said, I don't,
I'm not very good at that.
I don't,
everybody I ever worked with got drunk.
And besides,
I haven't met any newcomers here on the East Coast.
He said, yeah, I know.
They go to those meetings you don't attend.
He said, what are you doing about the third step?
I said, I don't believe in God.
He said, that's not what I asked you.
What are you doing about the third step?
And I said, what do you mean?
I can't,
I got through the third step
by accepting the idea
that my higher power
could be all of the sober alcoholics around the world
linked together in spirituality.
He said, how does that work for you today?
I said, it doesn't work at all.
It's just baloney.
It's podium talk,
but it got me through to the fourth step.
I don't understand any of this stuff.
You want me to be Mr. Wonderful,
Mr. Spiritual,
Mr. Smooth?
That's not what I am.
I'm crazy.
He said, I noticed.
He said, well, I'll tell you what I think you've got to do.
I think you've got to go to those meetings
whether you think they're properly run or not.
And he said, I would suggest
that you just put your ass in the chair
and leave your head outside.
He said, I think you must begin
to work with newcomers
because they may save your life.
And he said, I think more than anything else
that you must begin to pray.
And I said, Phil,
how can you pray
when you don't believe in God?
He said, you say a phony prayer.
I said, why would I do that?
He said, because you're a phony.
I said, well, you mean you could say a prayer
and not mean it?
He said, sure.
He said, you weren't that thrilled
about making coffee at those early meetings,
but you did it anyway.
You weren't thrilled about picking up newcomers
at the Vimini Hotel in the Royal Palms,
but you did it anyway.
You weren't that thrilled
about doing any of the things that you did in AA.
You just did it anyway.
That's the theme song of AA.
Do it anyway.
Who cares what you think?
So I began to go to meetings
and just sit there
and try to listen to these people
in spite of the fact that they were
really didn't have a handle on this program.
And I began to grab newcomers by the throat.
And I say, you call me at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning
and you're going to get drunk.
And some of them did.
And some of them stayed sober.
Now, I don't know what to do with them when they're sober.
I have no idea.
They're in your living room,
they're in the kitchen,
they're on the phone,
you can't get rid of them.
What meeting are we going to tonight?
I don't know.
You're the newcomer.
You'll go to the meeting.
Or you're in the middle of the meeting
and you're trying to look like a pretty sharp sponsor.
You're looking good there
and one of these goofs,
he walks up and says,
how do you work the third step?
It's kind of embarrassing
if you have to tell them the truth.
I don't know.
I never tried that one.
So I went to meetings
and I went to meetings
and I went to meetings
and I worked with newcomers
and I said that prayer day and night
and night and day.
I thought it was pretty funny, actually.
Here I am, the phony,
saying a phony prayer to a phony God.
It was perfectly all right with me.
As long as I don't have to believe it.
And I got fired.
I came here to San Diego
and I worked here for a while
and then I quit the job I had here
because I wasn't making enough money
and it wasn't up to my standards.
It never occurred to me,
don't quit a job until you've got another one.
Because however much money I was making,
it was more than I was making
when I was out of work.
These simple little things
just don't occur to me.
So I was out of work five months
and I ran out of money.
And I ran out of money.
And I ran out of money.
And I ran out of money.
And I ran out of money.
And I had a home in La Jolla
and the bank had written me a letter
explaining to me that they wanted it.
And my wife was very upset
because we were out of money
and things were not going well.
I was sitting in the tower of the house
looking at the ocean.
I was into prayer and meditation quite a bit.
And she said,
are you going to get a job or what?
And I said, I don't know.
And she said,
well, I think I've got to leave.
I think I'm going to have to divorce you.
And I knew that I'd failed
again as a husband.
I knew that I had failed
as a worker, as an employee.
I knew that I was failing as a father
because I could not seem
to get my children to shape up.
I just couldn't seem to get the world
to do what I thought was right
and knew was right.
I wrote the play for them
and I wrote the dialogue
and I blocked the show
but they just wouldn't follow my direction.
And it was going on
in every aspect of my life.
I finally,
I knew that I was a complete loser,
that I was just absolutely a peeled zero.
That's less than nothing.
And I didn't like it.
I wasn't comfortable with it.
But that's the way it was.
I went down to the beach in La Jolla one night
and I sat there and I cried
and I cried and I cried
because I was such an utter
and absolute and complete failure.
And I could not stand that
because I finally had to admit it myself.
And I sat there and I cried
and I cried
because there was nothing I could do
and I was powerless.
I finally looked up
because that's where he's supposed to be.
I said,
you SOB,
I give up.
And I screamed it out.
It was midnight and it was March.
I was the only one on the beach.
But I had some sense
that somebody was listening.
I don't know where the hell
that came from.
But what I was beginning that night
and I didn't know it then
and I didn't know it for a long time after that
was this awful, agonizing, painful process
in AA we call surrender.
I didn't know that.
If I'd known it,
I probably wouldn't have done it.
But I was out of answers.
I had no solutions left.
I didn't have one more ounce of energy in me
that could go after the big job
and the big money
and the heavy weight of money.
And I didn't know what was going on.
And I didn't know what was going on.
And I didn't know what was going on.
And the wonderful kids.
I had no energy left.
I couldn't do it.
I had failed in every department of my life.
I had no choice left
but to say I give up.
I hear people in AA sometimes say,
I don't know how to work the third step.
My answer is,
don't worry about it.
Life will surrender you finally.
I really believe that.
Happened to me.
Happened to a lot of people I know.
Some people came here surrendered.
I used to sit and listen to Chuck,
wonderful spiritual speaker in AA
and he talked about coming here surrendered
he got to AA surrendered
and my sponsor said to him one day
well Chuck
don't you think that when I was laying
on that gurney in the LA county hospital
dying of another
heroin overdose that I was
surrendered
and Chuck said yeah I think you were John
well don't you think I was just as surrendered
as you were he said I think you were John
he said why didn't I drink again
he said because
we got to do it
every day
that's why
it isn't like we work the third
step and walk away
the third step is a daily process
the third step is a
continuing process of surrender
and I have to
do it every day
I have to do it because I wake up with what I have
always identified as a horrible
sobriety problem
it kicks in the minute I stop drinking
and if I get
between now and May 25th without a drink
it's going to be 20 years since I had one
now
I would like to take your applause
warmly but I don't have any
news for it because I don't have any
credit for what I did here
see I think AA has done this not me
I can't do it
but I'm going to do it
but I do believe
that I have a horrible sobriety problem
that I wake up with
and it grabs me by the throat every day
my sobriety problem tells me
things like
they're not treating me right again
my sobriety problem tells me
things like
the boss is screwing me
the sobriety problem tells me
I'm not making enough money
I think
I'll spit in his face
and quit this stupid job
my sobriety problem tells me
it's perfectly alright
if I put a few things here
on the expense account that aren't real
they don't pay me enough
at least in AA
I've learned how to call that stealing
I've learned how to call things
by their right name here
my sobriety problem tells me
that I'm not doing it right
that if everybody would just listen to me
and pay attention to me
and follow my chain of thinking here
that the world would be a lot better place
my sobriety problem tells me
that
that I just can't stand
the pain of living anymore
because I'm isolated
and alone and crazy
and nobody understands
my sobriety problem
can tell me that
on days today
after 20 years
what do I do with it
I go to AA
because that's where I deal
with my sobriety problem
I take it into AA
and I've got a book
called Alcoholics Anonymous
that tells me what to do
with that sobriety problem
see the AA book
if the purpose of the book
was to teach us how to stop drinking
the guy who wrote it
missed the point
there isn't a line in there
or a sentence in there
that tells me how to drink
48 gallons of K-Roll syrup
and throw up for a week
or how to eat 49 Hershey bars
or how to do anything
to sober up
see Bill I think understood
as did Bob
as did the early members of AA
that we all already know how to sober up
we've done it a lot of times
everybody in AA knows how to sober up
getting sober
is not what we do here
we don't need meetings to do that
I'll tell you in a second
how to get sober
stop drinking
but if your problem like mine
tends to kick in
when you do that
if you begin to feel
really weird and crazy
sober
then we're beginning to identify
with one another
and this program of mine
the program written by these guys
a program that I've done
a program that I believe today
was divinely inspired
a program
the steps
the book
divinely inspired
had to be
because the guys who wrote it
were incapable of doing so
the longest sober guy
was three and a half years
when this damn book was written
how did he know?
had to be divinely inspired
in my opinion
he couldn't have known
today people with 20 and 30
and 40 years of sobriety
read that book
and see new stuff in it
how can that be?
has to be God's hand
has to be
well
this sobriety problem
is something that I have to bring
to every meeting that I attend
and when I go into the meeting
and when I work with newcomers
and when I try to participate
and be a part of AA
whether it's coming here to talk
or if it's going to my Saturday night meeting
and making coffee
which is what I'm going to do tomorrow night
or if it's going someplace
and stacking chairs
if it's mopping a floor
whatever the hell it is
working with a newcomer
any action that I take in AA
is aimed at allowing me
for just a moment
to deal with that sobriety problem
so that maybe
I can get calm enough
and peaceful enough
and feel okay enough
that maybe it won't be necessary for me
to start drinking again the next time
because that's the problem
not getting sober
so if I stay sober
and I deal with my sobriety problem
and I work on it
I've got a reason
I've got a reasonable shot
at being comfortable
and being at peace with myself
and feeling okay about Barney
and being able to walk out of this hotel
because these conventions and conferences
are wonderful
but they're just pit stops
we come in here to get oil and grease
and gasoline and some air in the tires
and Monday morning
we're back out there on the track again baby
and we've got to face them people out there
those
Jesus social drinkers
and I've got to live with them
so I must come here to get
what I need
after 20 years
why do you go to AA Barney
because I've got a sobriety problem
and I will have a sobriety problem
until the day that I die
that's why I come here
that's why I must be here with you
that's why I have to come in here
and just absolutely drain you people
because that's what I do
I drain you
because you've got the energy
and you've got the spirit
and you've got the fun
and you've got the joy
and you've got the happiness
and I need that
and I come and get it
and the damnedest thing happens
we just keep
revolving and revolving
and draining one another
and draining one another
and draining one another
and it's
the electricity and the energy
finally fills everybody
it's the damnedest thing
this is a
the best thing that ever happened to me
I am
I am
I am
really happy to be here tonight
to tell you that
over a long period of time
I have come to believe
that a power greater than myself
who
can restore me to sanity
I don't think he's done it yet
but I think he can
and I just want to keep coming back here
until maybe I can get a little taste of that
maybe I can get a little taste of that
get a little feel of that
and I hope that you all will have a little taste
of that this weekend
you have a wonderful group of speakers lined up
wonderful
fellowship in the hallway out here
you can hear it already
Oh don't come in the damn meeting
just stand out there and talk
that's all right
The speaker is now sensitive
I just want you to know I love you.
Thank you.