Skulking Across the Street to Steal Miller Lites from the Neighbor’s Carport Fridge Like a Grown Man 🫠 – David H.

an alcoholic welcome to the monday night blue chip speakers meeting at the nava club where a member of alcoholics anonymous with one year more of sobriety tells his or her story this reading is based on a passage from page 29 of the big book of alcoholics anonymous each individual and our personal stories describes in their own language and from their own point of view the way they establish their relationship with god these give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear cut idea of what has happened in their lives we hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight and listening later on aa bluechipspeakers.org desperately in need will hear our speaker and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say yes i am one of them too i must have this thing now i'm going to introduce the speaker david so everybody give him a round of applause and i'm really excited to hear what he has to say oh well good evening my name is david i'm an alcoholic i want to thank you guys for inviting me and uh it's kind of interesting how i got here uh it was at the roundup and i was kind of uh browsing around the brownies and the cookies i could to avoid them but i saw this very friendly uh face and she introduced herself her name was lisa and you know like all of us can do we knew our backgrounds in about 30 seconds and um she said hey you know where do you where's your home group i said well it's uh 8111 roswell road and she said well would you like to do it be a speaker i said well sure where and she said well at nava and i said well i'm not sure where that is and she looked um astounded and i probably should have known basically as long as i've kind of been around here but anyhow i'm really glad that i was invited here tonight and i was going to start off with something and it's that i do this and i always say a little prayer before i have an opportunity to uh speak because i want to make it very clear that uh hopefully the message that i'm going to give you is that i'm going to be a part of the church that i'm delivering to be acceptable to god and that it will be of uh some help to everybody here and it certainly is a selfishly it's a very big help uh to me to be here among people who are as close to me as probably any of my family and i only know some of you vaguely but i think we all know each other and that's what's important i had a very difficult uh event occur on um september 21st and i thought that it might um change my some of the texts or the way that i was going to talk to you guys tonight but i actually it didn't and i'll tell you why um my brother passed away uh he was up at duke medical and he had um had very serious uh heart disease and he had finally gotten on the transplant list and um the transplant actually went well but he did not regain consciousness and he um he passed away and what does so important about that unlike um some of my other careers at funerals and in times of need um i didn't um the thought of drinking didn't even enter my mind i say that to you because that's kind of like the old cash register on honesty what it really means is i've behaved like an adult i mean who else but us would say you know gee whiz i didn't i didn't feel necessary to take a drink you know i mean but that actually kind of came into my mind whereas um most people would say you know you were you're helping your family uh you were uh you're grieving over your brother and you know i'm not so sure that you should be bragging about something that most adults do but what um sustained me through this difficult time was very fortunately i i feel like i do have a good program and i do have um a set of tools that were given to me by god it's my belief uh to keep me sober um today and that's why i'm so grateful to be here among you folks tonight i do see some familiar faces and i do see some familiar faces and i do see some familiar faces and that's always a good thing and i actually would like to start um coming here i think that since i'm already uh into lisa for some money then um i definitely will at least be back a couple of times since she has my text um you know i was going to say one thing it's uh this is a serious meeting but i think we also sometimes have to um find some humor in things that i think only only us could find humor in but um i was thinking about you know appearances are not all all the same seems to be sometimes but i can recall back a few years ago and we have a strange format as you guys do but 545 meeting is the one that i go to so i i pulled up and it's my usual place you know how we all have our own parking places and you back in just a certain way and i was looking i was looking at this guy and he was standing out and he looked like he was like kind of typecast from like a 1940s aa movies it's old crusty white guy with this big white mustache and he was out there like you know waving his arms and smoking and pointing to people and all and um i thought you know this guy's you know probably knows bill w and uh but i've never seen him before so we we go in the meeting and like what we do is a lot of times uh we'll we'll have somebody that's kind of new that may may chair in order to kind of give them some exposure so this guy goes and he sits down and then this uh young person comes up and sits down and he goes uh well you know tonight uh uh we got uh we're gonna have a really great meeting uh uh we've got uh ken i'm sure he's got a lot to say i just met ken but um you know we're looking forward to what ken's got to say so ken kind of scowls at the group and he goes ah you know my ego is not my amigo and he just ran it on and i wanted to stand up and applaud because he never talked anything but just these slogans and all and he would kind of berate people that would share and he was scowling at everybody and you know and i was like god this guy's this guy's really got something to hold on to and so at uh at the end of the meeting the the young youngster and you know youngsters anybody younger than me he he gets up and he says well you know and you know bobby is going to give out the chips and bobby comes over you know anybody want to get a white chip and ken gets up i'll get one of those and he walks over and gets a white chip and sits down he says i just love but i love drinking too and i thought well hopefully um hopefully i will not um i won't mislead you that way but my sobriety date is uh february 3rd of 2006 and uh it is it is by the grace of god that i am here among you guys it really is and um i've always said if i if i got what i deserved it would have been uh some terrible consequences and fortunately um i'm here among you today i'm full of a lot of gratitude and i'm going to be a part of the community and i'm going to be a part of the but um i was born in atlanta and i had was uh an attorney my mom uh so you know i had had you know anything damaging that that occurred to me and um so in that regard i'm i'm fortunate i do remember though because now i'm don't mind i'm 66 so my parents were of that generation they lived through the depression my father had been in the navy in the second world war so uh you know drinking was kind of a you know a right of way for me to drink and i was born in atlanta and i was born in atlanta and uh so i became very accustomed to it uh unfortunately um both of my parents uh suffered from this disease and this disease um did take my mother when she was 71 and um so it's uh it does i guess you'd say run in the family i spent an inordinate amount of time early on trying to figure out uh was it genetic was it disease was it something that happened to me and after a while i determined that i was spending an inordinate amount of time on something that i just needed to accept which was that i'm an alcoholic there's no question about that i have no denial about it and then some but i was uh exposed to alcohol early on and i i can remember my dad would cook on the grill and he'd be cooking a steak or something and he had these frosted mugs or these brown frosted mugs and this is back in the day you didn't have pop tops it's the old days so he'd have these cans of our schlitz um there wasn't malt liquor it's just the regular schlitz uh and he also had carling black label it just these you know just really good beers but he would pop you know the you crush it and then he poured you could hear it gurgling in there and i'd be standing there and there was something about it and i it dawned on me i was kind of romanticizing the drink the whole ritual that he went through was uh something i thought you know i think i could i can enjoy doing that myself and of course i did but um that was a few years later but not not not actually a lot later but you know some of the things that i did notice as i was growing up and i'm talking these are the this is kind of before i started drinking and you know how we do say and i believe there's a lot to this that alcohol is but a symptom of uh much deeper problems that we have and uh as i say when i'm speaking to you guys it's just this is just me so i'm not making any value judgment on whether you do or do not experience this something tells me that hopefully throughout this talk there will be at least some uh thread of similarity but i know that i was um i felt different from other kids in the sense that um i was i was shy and probably somewhat introverted and i had not yet determined that introversion to um uh extroversion and i remember one of the worst childhood memories that i you know i was just kind of i thought i was a regular kid and i remember in kindergarten there was this uh miss flint who ended up being a nemesis of mine she talked to my mother after uh one of the you know it's his kindergarten for god's sakes and she said well i'm a little bit worried about dave you know he doesn't seem to be he's nice he gets along with the kids but doesn't seem to like really want to be playing with the kids too much he sort of wants to just grow up in his own world well so the solution to that was uh and we used to call it with my children a play date but you didn't call it about them back then uh ricky landrum uh was going to be invited to come over and play with me which i didn't want and i didn't like him and he i had like almost soldiers and stuff stacked up and i mean he came in and i don't even remember what he had on like back then kids were these roy rogers like he had a hateful little pistol song and shit so it's like one of the worst it really shattered now you know i was talking did i have a bad experience that one really really got next to me and um honestly i followed ricky ricky went to um uh drew a hill high school where i went and he dropped out and then i did hear they found ricky floating with a bullet in the back of his head in the chattahoochee um i didn't have anything to do with that i think he set set the pattern early with uh tearing up other kids toys over the place but uh you know i was i was the kind of kid that um i was a i was a good student and y'all have to excuse me i had some knee surgery so i'm kind of leaning here um i was a good student i had um a good family i had an older brother who i just mentioned i had a younger sister and i um i didn't really have i didn't have a lot of difficulties that i think some other folks as as i think back on it but i know that there were things about me that eventually um accelerated that uh alcohol seemed to be a solution for and of course it wasn't but i in uh sports i was i was actually a very good student i mean i was kind of a pretty good kid um you know so you know did i guess you could say what people might say would be we kids do but i remember um when i was 14 we were going to have a donkey sleep on the ground and um i think our parents knew everybody knew and there was a claremont liquor store and you could go and you could kind of park around the corner and there were these old guys that would be there and i see some heads nodding and you know they would see the high school kids pull up and they would flock to the car and you know you would give them a certain amount of money they'd go in and you know they would make a recommendation so we got uh y'all know mad dog 20. 20 and uh boone's farm apple wine and i think some slow gin or something like that you know like you know we were going to be sophisticated so we go and um camp out which was really just all of us sitting around drinking uh i got uh terribly sick threw up and couldn't wait the next day to do it again and i became um kind of a sensation i'd fit in with the guys so like i um i really from the first time that i drank i drank alcoholically and i made me feel in the sense that it did make me feel like i could fit in i wish i'd known now you know that i was i was not fitting in i was um masking a lot of a lot of issues that were just just kind of below the surface but i finished um high school and had done done well and i was uh uh accepted university of georgia so um at the time because of the vietnam war the drinking age in georgia was 18 so uh guys at claremont liquor store you know kind of lost a lot of customers but you can imagine you're you know you're 18 and you know you're away from home and you're staying in the dorm and um you know back then it's like you have these nickel a beer nights and um and i was uh just loved every minute of it but a pattern began to set in my life that uh lasted for quite some time and that was is somewhat belabored but in my case i think there's some evidence that it there was some truth to it and that was that i was somewhat of what you'd call a functional alcoholic and by that i mean i was able to keep my grades up at that time i did not drink at inappropriate times i was able to get through the week i would study i went to class but any any chance that there was on the weekend back when you had these keg parties you know i mean i would just get get hammered and i even started noticing at that time when i was like 18 19 20 i was pretty much and in athens this was an accomplishment but i was almost the town drunk of athens and that was saying a lot back then um i drank even then i drank more than most of my peers and i started to notice that but not so much in a way that it concerned me but i was able to keep my grades up and i was able to keep my grades up as much as just that um i actually thought that it was something that was uh made me kind of um of course uh unfortunately i found out much later that it that it didn't but that was a pattern that i that i established that i was able to do the work that i had in front of me and yet i was able to um also carry on this uh life of drinking and drinking to excess every time i drank and drinking more and more than the people uh relationships that i had when i was uh with date girls was um one where i think that i was um not a good guy in that regard because i think deep down i didn't have a lot of um love or respect for myself and so i i had a tendency to treat anyone who i felt was crazy enough to be around me uh with with less than the proper respect because you know i thought you know if i was a good guy i would have a lot of respect for myself i'm looking in the mirror what is it you're not seeing that i'm seeing but that uh that continued so i finished my undergraduate degree i did um stick around taught my parents wanted to stay in athens and i got a master's degree and so i was uh ready to um hit the corporate world and i got a job with um at&t and my my background was um finance so one of the things that that enabled me to do was even though i didn't have a job i didn't have a job i didn't have a job i didn't know i was probably had the emotional maturity of you know the 14 year old arrested development uh you know i was able to do um you know things with numbers that you know you didn't you didn't necessarily have to have a lot of emotional uh iq to you know you didn't do spreadsheets back then but you did performance statements but i was um so i got out i did the same thing i came to atlanta got an apartment um you know then i didn't have to worry about uh anything during the week so um you know i could go and drink uh every night at a bar um at the time that was the people that i had uh gone to school with we were all kind of in that time frame you're in your 20s um everybody's smoking pot that was when coke was first coming out to be uh kind of more of a designer drug and uh so you know i would do that but not um not as a drug of choice but you know i was certainly putting other substances in my body but alcohol specifically um beer was was uh what my go-to was and i started noticing though that my friends were starting to do uh i'd call it like adult things so they were going to settle down they're going to get a steady girlfriend and um so i decided that i needed to get a steady girlfriend get married and then i would be um an adult so uh i did that the attraction was actually and i have to admit it was it was kind of one of these things it was uh it was physical and uh she was also um a drinking buddy and what better combination did i need at the time so then uh in order to continue trying to be an adult uh we bought a house you know would wake up every saturday start drinking i could tell there was a little worry in her face but not to the degree that she felt comfortable saying much about it and then we were getting ready to um move to new jersey which was uh at&t headquarters at the time and i started looking around and a number of my friends were going to have kids so i remember um i came home and at&t was going through the strike so we were working 12 hours a day seven days a week and uh i came home and i said everyone's have a kid and uh we did we you know and i'm very blessed but uh it was just one more thing that i felt was going to make me what i conceived to be an adult but i still behaved uh like the teenager that was drinking um you know boone's farm apple wine when i was 14. time the last uh we had a beautiful little girl katie who i'm fortunate to be very close to today and then that followed up with uh david jr who i'm also close with and i said i think now is the time that the my alcoholic behavior started to become so we we moved to new jersey and i had a and we lived in a somewhat rural area of new jersey because it was so expensive and i remember that i i had kind of crafted in my mind that there was this persona that i was going to um sort of embody right so i was this uh you know make sure that as soon as someone met me um i knew where i'd gone to college what my degrees were uh a few things like that that were going to deflect any any discussion but i was going to kind of build myself up and what i considered to be um the kind of person that would be attractive to folks and of course that i was also always had a can of miller light in my hand and so i had this idea that i was kind of this like really cool guy drive in the driveway and i'd get out with the beer the kids would kind of talk out and you know um but it wasn't like uh the cleavers coming home ward was never um blackout drunk when he was um with the boys upstairs but um that became a habit and so that's what i did uh every night pretty much and i knew that it was causing some worry with my my wife there was some little hints that would be dropped but um i was able to deflect a lot of things you know you can't imagine how tired i am how hard i'm working you know we all know how that kind of goes and um then i started coming into the to the point where other people were pointing out my drinking now i'm not that old at this point i'm like uh i guess 29 i'm not that old i'm not that old i'm not that old i'm not that maybe 30 and there were these people that lived across the street uh from us mike and cindy wassailak but um i think we know how this kind of goes we would walk across the street to visit with them they had younger kids uh we did and cindy was a pharmacist and um so cindy was from new jersey goes dave you know your liver is going to explode and i thought you know and uh so she says uh i said i don't know why you think that and you know she kind of looked at me like well you know what about last night and uh so she started giving me this stuff like iron pills and milk thistle and all of this and then i would see these whispered conversations between her and my wife and it was clear that i was the top of the conversation now that never made me do anything except to be more careful uh and i remember the wassailaks had this refrigerator in their carport and they always had it right and so you know how this is in order and one of the things i remember that called me up uh when he asked me about a guy i knew in atlanta called me up when i first moved to new jersey he said hey you know how you like the job and you only thought i was going to say something about at&t i said man you're going to believe this is the the the bars all sell um alcohol and you can go in the bar they open most of them at six there's one in downtown it opens at 6 a.m and at 3 a.m you know you can still get um a packaged beer and so there's a lot of people that are in this little window for about three hours that you got to manage possibly not getting anything so what i found out was after a while that um in order for me you know to go to procure whatever day like a saturday or sunday well you know i needed like it was probably a four or five minute drive into town so you know your time but that would be like one and a half mil or lights so i go over to mike and cindy's and kind of skulk over there grab four or five beers out of their uh refrigerator and i found out later that they knew it and you know but i thought i was gonna stuff them in their pockets i'm a grown man doing this walk over and um so i started getting getting a lot of comments that i was that there was a pack and i remember one time um my wife said you know you got to be careful you know you you know you're holding katie last night i thought you're going to drop her and so i said well you know by god i'll show you and i'm not going to drink and a birthday coming up so i somehow or another didn't drink for like three days and punished everybody in the family and the way that things kind of ended in new jersey and i wish that some of this had made a difference to me at the time but it didn't and one of the things that i like to do was uh you know you had a lot of snow up there and i had a uh had a four-wheel drive tahoe and i love to go driving around in the snow well i like to drive and drink you know i mean some of understand that and that was kind of something i enjoyed doing and that's it to say that but it was true and i remember i would take the kids and they were like little they were each in the back and their little feet are just sticking straight out and so i would have my cooler miller light beside me and uh we would just drive around in the snowstorm and let's look at the snow you know and let's look at the snowman or what and so we were driving around one day and i'll never forget why do you drink so much beer you know out of the mouth of babes right and i said i don't know you know like my son who's always kind of been my advocate maybe not when he should have been he goes yeah but dad never gets drunk so it's kind of interesting now this is a two-year-old four-year-old and they this wasn't this didn't just pop into their heads you know this had been a topic of conversation at some point and i said um well you know how it is you know i just you know and of course i've got a can of miller light between my legs and i'm driving around in a snowstorm and sometimes you know i have friends who who talk um and it's very poignant when they talk about um that uh for defects may have taken their children and it is usually for the exact kind of behavior that at that time uh new jersey had very strict laws if i had been pulled over um would have been automatic jail time and it would have been very serious repercussions and i did not suffer those types of repercussions but what was starting to happen was is that you know while i would have told anyone that i love my children more than anything in the world even at that point face up to that because i did so but things continued to go well at work so i was um uh doing well and i was uh promoted and we moved to um london uh so i made a name for myself in london gatwick airport uh not the kind you'd want you know i would go to the states and um we were living in kensington so kind of a nice area of london and again you know everybody thinks about the brits uh well they actually just they looked at it more socially i just wanted to get drunk and quite often when i would be flying back to the united states and i'd be able to go on a weekend um i would be happy to sit in the bar uh the first plane back to washington dallas might be say a you know noon and the next one would be coming in at six and i was happy to sit in the bar until six instead of flying on back to virginia uh and they could pour me off the plane in virginia and i didn't have to face the family they're back in london so then we moved back from from london to northern virginia the next 10 years we've only kind of won a little foray back into new jersey and florin park but by now uh affected my life i was either planning on how i was going to be drinking drinking of course i was remorseful about having uh done what i'd done the night before things are starting to occur i was very involved in my kids um sports my son was a pretty good little baseball player and i remember a couple of times came over and he said oh you know you really miss it again he said well you know parents smell alcohol in your breath so i'm looking over the stand you know fuck you i'm a parent volunteer and all that kind of thing and uh so i'm angry at the parents you know that was a you know i'm angry at the parents you know i didn't i did not look at my behavior as being anything other than something that should be accepted and but i would continue to have do well at work a train wreck in my conversation started we would be sitting in the driveway after going out this would be my wife and i by then we would both go out the only thing we had in common was drinking but we would be talking about each other's drinking uh we were running we'd run through babysitters like you can't imagine because we'd get kids in the neighborhood to come babysit and and the heads that's my last name were known uh you know you tell the kids you're going to be home at 10 and we'd be home at one and the parents would you know the kid you know you wouldn't have a babysitter anymore after that and we'd usually be in sitting in the driveway arguing about my drinking and then me accusing her of drinking too much and then me accusing her of not understanding the enormous pressures i was under and what a tremendous provider i was family and so i was i was looked at myself as now as as an economic bully because that's really what i was you know i could kind of uh you know let's go to disney world you know take a trip somewhere and why don't you go get a new car please shut up and let me go back to sitting out in the driveway and drinking so it got to be a pretty sick way of living my life and that went on and so it's getting kind of the time to talk about that there is some decent ending to the story but what had happened by the year to to atlanta it was you know it was a lot of work and it was a lot of work and it was a lot of work and you know it's one of those things the marriage was pretty much irretrievably broken we moved in a neighborhood that uh pretentious sort of folks uh i think i wanted to be was too busy with just being um just being a drunk to um to even do that so of course then we started talking about getting the divorce and that's um that starts to come my daughter was getting ready to start georgia and my son was uh and he was a sophomore in high school and i remember one time and it was it was just this is the point guys that it was like uh every night stagger in drunk i would uh wait to come home till about nine o'clock and uh it was evident that dad was you know all the begging and pleading except for my kids would then start approaching me you know uh dad look what you're doing to us i can never forget um that statement being and you would think um going back to 1993 and 1994 driving around when the kids are two and four why do you drink so much dad and then now katie's uh doesn't want me to go move her into brumby uh because she doesn't want her father staggering so you know 14 years have elapsed and all that's happened is uh the disease has progressed and that's what it and that's what it does and so what had happened with me was uh i no longer really had any kind of moral compass and i'd like to say as i've looked at it now that i was uh i think i was morally and spiritually bankrupt now i had been raised as a methodist you know and i had um fortunately that was something i think it saved me i did not have uh i did not have an issue with uh god is my higher power but i did not have a conscious so so finally what happens guys the train wreck's about to end so you can be glad of that but i get divorced as you could imagine um daughters at georgia not speaking to me we of course had my son in all kinds of private schools and therapy and all of that kind of thing uh i'm like just you know just a drunk i mean that's that's just it there's no other way to put it so on february 2nd of 2006 i to this day i'm not sure quite what happened but i i must have fallen i i don't i had no idea but i was um kind of dividing my time um between a little place i had lake burton where i could go run away and a little place i had here somehow or another i made it to north fulton hospital emergency room now up until that time i had stringently avoided any contact with blood being drawn like for physical because i knew what the answer was going to be but anyhow they kind of poked around the emergency room and i was thinking i'd you know broken my back and they said no you haven't but they said yeah you got a primary care physician i said yeah i do so maybe you ought to go see him tomorrow and they're starting to order around the time poking around right here and that's what my liver was and you know so i was scared but not so scared that i hadn't planned ahead of time so i had my miller lights to sustain me until i could go see the um uh north atlanta primary care the next day which was february 3rd of 2006 which by the grace of god is the last um what's my first friday date uh first february 2nd last day i drank february 3rd 2006 that's as of today that's the last drink that i will ever have to take i hope but i went to my doctor they said we've got to do an ultrasound uh they said we look at the liver tests that were sent back uh your ast and alt are at the point where we think that you have cirrhosis of the liver and everything that had happened would have given you every indication that i didn't care if i lived or died but this is god doing for me what i couldn't do for myself and it was the gift of desperation because i was so afraid that i had cirrhosis of the liver and i had some friends and connections and i was able to get a liver biopsy actually scheduled for the next day so i asked the uh folks there they i had no idea what an a.a meeting even was but they gave me address of 81 11 so why don't you go there there might be some people here that well i'm at the doctor you know how if y'all can't help me how can you know please be well well they did so i uh showed up there about 4 30 5 45 meeting which is my home group uh i sat down on the back porch started asking everybody there if they had cirrhosis of the liver did they know what it was like did i look like i had it um you know was did did they think that i was going to die you know and they were kind you know to the to the most for the most part then the meeting started i went and sat in the meeting and i i think i actually did think i could go sit up at the desk and uh because it had people you know in my professional career that had to put up with me well these people didn't put up with me and they made it clear that i was not uh the the center of attention although in the regard i was that they were going to help me get sober so um i have to tell you guys i didn't really want to stop drinking but this was god saving my life and that is exactly what so if i tell you what happened afterwards i go i get the biopsy they said um you don't you don't have cirrhosis and i mean this i was flooded with relief like y'all can't imagine and but they said well you know you you just just don't drink because if you do you know it's going to be really bad and it's not going to be fast but it's going to be fatal and you're going to die and and i i think i grabbed on to that like chapter in the book about you know like a drowning man grabs onto the life preserver and so what i believe y'all is that god gave me the most valuable tool set he could which was the fellowship with alcoholics anonymous and i was able to combine those two what became a conscious contact with god which i had not had before i began to enjoy the fellowship and i began to look around to see a faces just like here and see people that would um become some of the closest friends that i've ever had in my life and who never dropped me in times when i needed them and so that was the message and it's been a very good life the things that i've done i have tried to i think keep it pretty simple i go to a lot of meetings i have a good sponsor i've actually got a very very good friend who is probably more of a sponsor to me than a sponsor but i don't think he's officially accepted that title yet but um i it's it's just been a such a a better way of life for me and the thing that i would would hope that would come away from this if there is anything is that um the thing that's unique and special about me is that to myself i'm unique and special and every one of you is unique and special every one of you uh every one of us is god's creatures and we're here by the grace of god today we have a chance we have a single way life and there's nothing wrong with that it's a society there's nothing wrong with the love of god come on to the universe you just gave so much power to and that was what I always hope that people can see is that I did not have some of the calamities take place on in my life that I think many of you probably have and I wouldn't even presume to to know some of the difficulties that you've had but by the grace of God I'm standing here before you I went through a difficult time with my brother and I was sustained a great deal by the program during that time that you asked me to be here today I'm thankful that you gave me the time and so God bless each and every one of you and hope to be back someday I'm on carry me with I can't stay here just showed me the door