The Evidence of a Higher Power in the Coincidences — Mary J.

I'm John Shires and I'm an alcoholic.\nHey everybody, great to be back with you guys.\nI'm really tickled to be able to introduce Mary Jane tonight.\nMary Jane and I have known each other about 20 years.\nI moved to Connecticut from Georgia 20 years ago.\nAnd my wife and I jumped into, well we weren't, I don't know, longer than that.\nIt was like 23 or 24 years ago.\nAnyway, we jumped into some activities and service.\nAnd so we met Mary Jane, had her do a couple of workshops and speakers for us.\nAnd she at that time was, I believe, the Northeast Regional Trustee?\nDelegate.\nDelegate?\nYou were delegate first.\nFrom Rhode Island.\nOkay, from Rhode Island.\nThen the trustee.\nSo we knew her during that time.\nAnd, you know, when you have service people like that, they're there to serve.\nSo we would call her and say, what do you think about this?\nAnd what do you think about that?\nAnd talk her ear off.\nAnd she introduced me to the man who became my sponsor a little over, almost 20 years ago.\nAnd so I owe her that.\nAnd I just think the world of her.\nI loved Mary Jane before I got sober.\nAnd I love Mary Jane now that I am sober.\nSo please welcome Mary Jane.\nDifferent Mary Jane.\nHello, friends.\nMy name's Mary Jane, and I'm an alcoholic.\nAlways strange for me to get started.\nIt takes a while.\nAnd especially tonight, I'm a little distracted.\nI had a lovely dinner.\nAnd all I want to do is have a drink.\nAnd all I want to do is have a drink.\nAll I want to do is have a nap.\nOh, my goodness.\nLet's see.\nI come by my alcoholism honestly.\nMy maiden name was O'Connor.\nAnd I grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.\nAnd so there was a young girl from Pawtucket.\nYou may want to do a limerick.\nI had a regular, pretty normal growing up.\nMy father was the normal, regular alcoholic.\nBut he got to AA when I was 12 years old.\nAnd I saw with my own eyes what happened, the difference.\nI didn't understand it, but our lives changed.\nBefore I was 12, we didn't have a car.\nMy dad had, I don't know how many jobs.\nBut clearly, things changed one day in 1950.\nAnd that's when my dad got sober.\nBut I don't remember my childhood as being,\nI certainly was not deprived.\nMy parents were attentive.\nAnd loving.\nAnd I think they did a good job.\nYou know, they did the best they could.\nI, oh, I'm going to throw this in just because it's been helpful to me.\nI had some resentments about my parents when I took my first,\nwell, it wasn't my first, fifth step.\nBut my sponsor at that time said to me,\nyou need to know that anything that you think your parents should do,\nshould have done for you, they didn't withhold it.\nThey just didn't have it to give.\nAnd that's been very helpful for me.\nAnd the reason is, I can see it clearly, having had a child now.\nI would give him anything I could.\nBut I'm sure I fell short, but it's probably\nbecause I didn't even know, or I didn't know how to do it.\nBut that was very helpful to just know, and to let it go.\nYou know, my parents did as good as, you know, as anybody could have.\nSo I had a relatively normal growing up.\nPublic schools, walked to school, 87 miles each way, uphill, in the snow.\nBut by the end of high school, even, I was starting to monkey around.\nLike, my job tonight, I think, is,\nis, I'm supposed to tell you what I was like.\nNot what it was like, but what I was like.\nThis is what I brought here, was, so I started monkeying around in high school\nwith, if I, if I got to babysit or something, as soon as their car pulled\nout of the driveway, I'd go find their liquor.\nAnd, no, I don't know why.\nI don't know why.\nI really don't.\nI don't remember even having conversations about this with anybody.\nAnd, and there was something about it that was secret, and I,\nand I shouldn't tell anybody I knew that.\nAnd I didn't think that it was okay to do, either.\nBut I, that's what I did.\nI'd find their liquor, and I thought I had invented a foolproof cover.\nI would make a little notch in the label, you know,\nso that I could put water in up to that level.\nAnd then nobody would ever know, right?\nWrong. You know, but I, probably.\nI don't know.\nBut, at any rate, it was just kind of penny-ante stuff.\nSo, I didn't know right off that I was an alcoholic\nor an alcohol-troubled person, even.\nI just, I just, I knew it was kind of exciting to do,\nand I looked forward to it, and that's what I did.\nI started to kind of get a little bit deeper\ninto the whole drinking thing just about my senior year.\nAnd, and I, I got a job as a waitress over on Block Island.\nIt's off the coast of Rhode Island, and it's a summer resort.\nAnd so, you have all these people vacationing at the hotels and stuff,\nbut you also have this whole subculture of the bellboys, and the maids,\nand the boat handlers, and the, you know, this whole subculture.\nAnd none of us had much money.\nSo, we'd just kick in whatever we had, and, and we would have a beach party.\nWell, it wasn't a party.\nWe just got as much booze as we could afford and hauled it down to the beach\nand drank until we threw up, you know.\nSo, elegant, right?\nBetter living.\nBut, but I loved it.\nI just loved it.\nWent back the next two years.\nAnd, and, and I, I really, really, really, really loved it.\nAnd, and, and I worked all summer to get money for books for college.\nAnd I'd come home after those two months with about $35, you know.\nBut my folks were okay with that.\nMy mother let me go do it because her parents never let her do much of anything.\nSo, she wanted to let me do whatever she could manage to, to help me out.\nSo, by then, though, I was starting to, you know, I was starting to, you know,\nI was starting to, you know, I was starting to, you know,\nI was starting to, you know, I was starting to, you know,\nI was starting to get kind of messy.\nSo, I won, I talked to my parents into letting me go to a Quaker school in Indiana for college.\nEarlham College, if you've ever heard of it.\nBut, and I don't, I mean, my dad had become a Quaker.\nIn his sobriety, he, he did a, a kind of a conscience search and, and became a Quaker.\nAnd so, I used to go to Quaker meetings.\nI used to hang with him sometimes, and I, I knew about Quakerism.\nAnd I thought that they were admirable people.\nAnd I, I was sure that they were better behaved than I was.\nAnd so, that's what, I think that's, I think that was my reasoning.\nI'm not sure why.\nBut I, I campaigned to get to go to this Quaker school.\nAnd I've thought about it since, you know, with inventories and stuff.\nAnd I would tell you now that I think I had in my mind that I would be protected there.\nQuakers didn't drink.\nI'd be okay.\nNow, the funny part of that was, I wasn't, I didn't know that I was acknowledging a problem.\nWhy would I need to be protected from the life that I was starting to live\nif I didn't already know that it was, you know, had taken a hike.\nIt had taken a turn.\nSo, anyways, they, they let me go off to this Quaker school.\nAnd I went off to be a nursing major at Earlham College in Indiana.\nAnd I did okay.\nNot great, but okay.\nBut you know what?\nWithin hours of my hitting that campus, I was drinking 3-2 beer,\nbecause that's the only thing you could get.\nAnd it wasn't near the campus either.\nYou had to go way far, like Ohio, to get it.\nSo, it was in hours, you know.\nSo, I might have been the only one that didn't know I had a problem, but to tell you the truth.\nAnyway.\nWhen I went home for summer vacation, I got a telegram saying the nursing program has been discontinued.\nIt wasn't the college, it was the hospital.\nThey, they decided that it wasn't profitable for them.\nThey shut down the nursing program.\nThey said I could change my major, or I could change my school.\nBut I had to make it some other choice.\nWell, I could already see that I wasn't doing all of it.\nI wasn't doing all of it.\nI wasn't doing all that well at this Quaker school that I had assumed was going to make me shape up.\nSo, I went ahead and transferred to the University of Rhode Island, where I lived.\nI had an aunt who was active in state politics, and she was able to get me in, in about two days.\nSo, I went down to URI, University of Rhode Island.\nAnd at that time, this was in 19, let's see, I graduated high school in 56.\nSo, it was a, would have been like early 58.\nAnd the veterans were coming back from the Korean conflict, and they all had cars and money, and were thirsty.\nAnd, where, remember South County in Rhode Island?\nIt was the, the, the waterfront county, and it was all bars, and, and resort hotels, and stuff like that.\nWell, the university was about.\n20 minutes away from all of that, so, and it was just called, we were going down the line, and everybody knew what that meant.\nJust piling the cars, we were going down the line, and we all knew the names of all of the places, and all that, and we'd make the rounds, and so that was my, my weekend stuff, was just going down the line, and drinking beer, and trying to stay out of trouble as best I could.\nPretty soon, though, I wasn't really doing much with the classwork, I mean, and, and I was going to some classes to kind of kill time between weekends, that's all, you know, that was my whole focus of attention, was just wait until Friday, you know, and then we'd be headed down the line, and drinking again.\nAnd so, I managed to get one full year done.\nAnd then the next year, I was out of control.\nI, I, I had, I had lost my grip on what little I had.\nPretty soon, I started getting called in for some counseling, and stuff like that.\nBecause I wasn't showing up.\nI wasn't going to classes, and I wasn't, and, and if I did, I was already late, and I, and it was, it was getting really sloppy.\nI finally got called in, and they, they, they gave me a whole list of, of reasons why this meeting was taking place, and it wasn't sounding good.\nAnd, and finally, the dean said to me that they were going to offer me the opportunity to withdraw for personal reasons.\nWell, there's no such thing, you know.\nIf you have to withdraw, you just got kicked out.\nSo.\nSo, anyway, that, that was the end of my college career, at that point.\nBut there was a girl in my class, and she wanted desperately to be an airline stewardess.\nAnd she asked me if I would ride to Providence with her.\nShe was going in for an interview, and so she wanted to, she was going to take the bus, and would I ride in with her.\nAnd I said, sure, and we talked, and we got into the hotel where they were interviewing people.\nAnd so, I filled out some of the papers, too.\nI didn't, I didn't have a plan B, so.\nI was at liberty, as they say.\nAnd so, I got hired by Eastern Airlines.\nI had never been on a plane.\n.\n.\nBut lucky for me, they were offering to employ me.\nSo, I was headed off for Miami Springs, Florida for the training school.\nAnd how nice, you know.\nAnd turns out I loved it.\nI thought it was great.\nNow this is back in like what, 1960, I guess.\nAnd, and at that point, that was a, that was a really slick deal.\nIt was really, you know, people got dressed up to take a flight, some place.\nFamilies would get up after dinner, and get in their car, and drive out to the airport to watch planes come in and out.\nYou know?\nIt was still fancy and, and kind of bizarre, and all that.\nSo, I loved it.\n. . . I loved it! . . . I loved it! . . . I loved it! . . . . I loved it! . . . . I loved it! . . . . I loved it! . . . . I loved it! . . . . I loved it! . . . I loved it!\nI just thought it was pretty hot stuff\nI just thought it was really neat\nand I loved the lifestyle\nI just thought it was great\nand it paid real well\nand so I got\nfirst I got\nplaced in New York\nand then I got transferred to Boston\nwhere I wanted to be\nand a friend of mine and I found a place to live\nup in Marblehead, Massachusetts\nwhere I just loved it\nI purely loved it\nI loved the job\nI loved everything about my life\neverything\nand then I started\nsetting fire to stuff\nI just started\nand I lost track\nI started being late\nfor work\nby now I'm having blackouts\nso I have to\ncall the crew schedulers\nand ask them to cover for me\nand see\nthat's using people\nand that's not okay\nyou can't build a life\non\nfalse premises\nand using people\nand just\noh jeez\nI was starting to hit stuff\nwith cars\nmy car\nI hit a house\nI hit some other cars\none time I was on my way in\nand I was always late for work\nso I was roaring into work\nto the airport\nto check in\nand I hit another car\nand I got out of my car\nand acted like I was writing a note\nabout how\nhere's how to contact me\nand all that\nand I put this piece of paper under the windshield\nI didn't put anything on there\nI just ran\nand here's my morality\nat that point\nif I\ngot away with something\nit was like it didn't happen\nthat's all I cared about\nand that's\nthat's\nwhat I should be talking to you about\nis stuff like that\nbecause that's what I was like\nand\nanyway\npretty soon I started getting called\ninto the office there\nbecause of being late\nand all that\nwell then\nuh\nI got a call\npretty\nI was blacking out\nuh\nsome days\nI really wanted to get there\nI really loved the work\nI wanted to get to work\nI just couldn't make it\nyou know\nI just couldn't get moving\nI couldn't get\nput together\nand get in there\nand um\neventually\nI finally missed a flight\nI mean like flat missed it\nthe flight was gone\nand they\nthey really\ntook me away from it\nI mean I'm not going to take offense at that\nthey really get upset\nand it upsets everybody\nit upsets their whole schedule\nthey gotta\nyank some people off of another flight\nto get them to cover here\nand all that\neverybody notices\nit's a big deal\nso\nthat was the first one\nand I got called in about that\nand I always had\nan elaborate\nexcuse about what had happened\nit was always some big thing\nthe thing that had happened to me\nwasn't on the radio\nbut it was on the radio\nand I was like\nI'm not going to do that again\nI'm not going to do that again\nbut I always had some kind of a dramatic thing\nthat I told them about\nand I thought that's all I owed them\nwas an interesting excuse\nyou know\nso\nbut anyways\nI got called in about that\nand then I got a certified letter\nbecause they were leaving a paper trail\nyou know\nand so I had to go in about that\nand\nI found it\ninconvenient\nto have to go to the post office\nand get this damn certified letter\nyou know\nI mean it interrupted\nmy day\nand I wanted to throw that in\nbecause\nI was that separated\nfrom reality\nto not realize\nthat it was serious stuff\nthat I was monkeying with\nI just thought\nI don't know why they're making such a big fuss\nyou know\nthat's crazy\nthat's not part of the adult\nfunctioning world\nwhich I didn't have any part in\nI really didn't\nI didn't belong there\nso anyway\nbut this went on and on\nand I missed a couple more flights\nwhich I think is a record\nbecause they really don't put up with it\nbut I finally got fired\nI got\nI started interviewing around\nI found a company to work for\nthat was even better\nit was a company\nthat sold products\nfor babies in hospitals\nand they had big territories\nand they had a lot of people\nand they were only women\non the sales service force\nin the United States and in Canada\nand in Great Britain\nand\nthey were big territories\nit was like\nit was\nI was interviewing in Massachusetts\nto be up in New England\nbut they filled that one\nbut they offered me another one\nwhich was\nfive states\nwith Maryland in about the middle of it\nand\nI\nI jumped at it you know\nand said yeah I'd like to do that\nso I got a chance to move to Maryland\nand then travel about a five state\nterritory\nand call on doctors and hospitals\nand\nI thought that was something I could maybe do\nand\nI wasn't sure I could sell anything\nbut then I thought you know I just sold me\nI got fired from my last job and I talked these people into hiring me\nI might be able to sell something\nso\nanyway they hired me\nand I found a place to live in Annapolis, Maryland\nI went from Marblehead, Massachusetts to Annapolis, Maryland\nso some things were still\nokay\nyou know\nthat was pretty nice\nand I started out\nwhenever I would start out with something new\nit seemed as though I would catch a little bit of a break\nand have a reprieve\nI don't know why\nbut you know\nit's like a new roll of the dice or something\nand I was able to kind of fool myself\nor a little bit\nbecause I wanted to be fooled\nbut I would say\nyou know that was just\nthat was a strange period of my life\nit was just a bad patch\nyou know\nbut now I'm really going to get serious\nand this is going to be great\neverything will be fine\nand it wasn't fine\nit didn't last very long at all\nand pretty soon\nI was back to my old level\nof consumption\nand behavior\nand misbehavior\nand stupid\nyou know\nit's just ugly\nI had a nice apartment\nbut pretty soon\nI had all the blinds drawn\nand it looked more like a cave\nand pretty soon\nwell\nabout then I started having DTs\nand\njust getting out of hand\num\nit wasn't too long after that\nthat I started to think\nI needed some help\nbecause I was getting afraid\nnow I wasn't able to get out\nand do this job\nsome of my territory\nwas on the other side of the Bay Bridge\nI couldn't drive across a bridge\nbecause I was weird\nI'd have to take the long way around\nor just not go\nso sometimes I did one\nand sometimes I did the other\nbut I couldn't drive across a bridge\ncouldn't drive across a bridge. My nervous system was starting to show up, you know.\nI couldn't call on people. I would go to the hospital and park in the parking lot where\nit said purchase agent, but I couldn't go in. One day I was in an elevator and I smelled\nthis sour, icky smell. And it was me. And it's liquor coming through your pores, you\nknow. And it's very distinctive when you smell it. It doesn't smell like anything else.\nAnd so, you know, I was just saturated. You can't, it's not a good idea to make a sales\ncall, you know. And so for the good of the company, I went home, you know.\nI just, anyhow, it got worse. But I also started to think, I need help. And I started\ngoing around to churches, but I never said anything to anybody. You know, I would just\nshow up and think I was going to be transformed. And I started going to doctors and describing\nsome of the things that I was going to be transformed into. And I started going to doctors\nand describing some of the things that I was going to be transformed into. And I started\ngoing to doctors and describing some of the things that I was going to be transformed\ninto.\nI didn't have much to say to them, but, you know, why are you here? Well, I'm not doing\nreal well. But at least I was reaching out. At least I was doing something which at another\nlevel says, you're a mess, you know. So, ultimately, you know, I was kind of so isolated\nand alienated.\nfor no good reason from my family, from anybody who I'd ever had as a friend or anything.\nSometimes I would call my folks in Rhode Island and say, I'm going to be home this weekend.\nI'm going to come up and visit.\nAnd nobody took anything out of the freezer if I said I was coming.\nNobody had any trust or faith or expectation for me anymore because I never did it.\nI would say I was going to do something, and I wouldn't do it.\nSo you lose credibility.\nAnd just, I'd get up off the couch and go get another drink and go into the bedroom.\nThen I'd get up off the bed and go in and get another drink and go in on the couch.\nAnd that's essentially how I was living.\nI knew I was going to get fired.\nAll my reports.\nAll my reports were fake.\nAnd they were gaining on me.\nAnd when you wake up in the morning and you open your eyes and you're three or four days or three or four weeks behind,\nit's coming.\nYou know, they're gaining on you.\nAnd so I kind of stepped up some of my efforts.\nAnd I did make a call.\nOne of my regular customers was the Johns Hopkins Hospital.\nAnd they were doing a research project on depression.\nAnd God knows I was depressed.\nI was really depressed.\nSo I went there.\nAnd I signed up.\nAnd they tested me and everything.\nAnd I qualified.\nSo I was still trying to do what I could.\nBut I couldn't do that much.\nSo anyway, one day I got up off the couch and I went past the kitchen.\nAnd I went into the bedroom and I called Alcoholics Anonymous.\nNow, I never.\nNever consciously had in my head that that was the problem.\nI never, never, never thought that that was what was the matter with me.\nI drank as much as I could every day.\nBut I never.\nAnd I held on to the fact that my father used to get in fights.\nI didn't get in fights.\nSo I wasn't an alcoholic.\nI knew that.\nAnd I needed a drink.\nAnd I knew that.\nThose two thoughts can lie comfortably in my head.\nAnd I think that that's part of our problem before we get here anyways.\nWe either don't know what alcoholism is or we don't know we have it.\nAnd I didn't know.\nI thought I knew, but I didn't.\nAnd anyway, the only thing that has ever made any sense to me was I got a shot of God's grace.\nAnd my desperation was God's opportunity, because I was out of ideas, I was out of plans, I was out of money, I was out.\nAnd sometimes that allows something to come in, and I believe that I got a shot of grace, because I never thought about, well, maybe someday I'll have to call it.\nI never thought about.\nI never thought about AA for me.\nThat wasn't the problem.\nI'm sure the problem was more serious than that.\nSo anyway, I got a little lady who answered the phone, and I asked her when there was a, here's me.\nI'm desperate, but I call up, and when somebody answers the phone, I say, when would you have a meeting going on?\nLike, I don't really need anything.\nI'm just curious, you know.\nJeez.\nSo, anyway.\nThis nice lady said that there was a meeting the following night, and she told me about this church.\nAnd it was about to the door from where I lived, diagonally across the street, just up a little ways.\nThat was where the next AA meeting was.\nAnd I didn't even, I didn't know it, but this was a couple who, Duvall and Queenie.\nAnd they had the phone in their home.\nThere was no central office or intergroup or anything like that.\nBut they would handle all of the local calls in Annapolis, and I got to meet them after I got sober in there.\nAnyway, I went to that meeting the next night.\nHere's what I did.\nI left my apartment.\nI got in the car.\nI drove around for a while, and then parked right over there.\nWhy?\nI don't know why.\nWhat is it?\nI'm just reporting.\nBut that's nuts, you know?\nI could have walked across the street.\nI guess I didn't want anybody to know where I was coming from or something.\nI don't know.\nBut that's what I did, is I drove around and pulled up my car over there.\nI don't remember what people said, but I do remember they were nice to me.\nAnd I felt safe.\nAnd I started to talk to people.\nAnd I hadn't talked to people in a long time.\nI was just pretty much shut down.\nBut they were just kind, and they seemed to be having a pretty nice time.\nSo they told me about where there were some other meetings, and I went to the other meetings.\nI started going regularly in Annapolis.\nI knew I was going to have to do something different.\nYou know?\nI was still hanging on.\nI was still hanging on to this job by a hair.\nBut I started to be able to work.\nI actually was able to drive into Baltimore, drive wherever I needed to go.\nThat was great.\nI was, you know, starting to get able to be in the world.\nAnyway.\nBut I started going to meetings, and I looked forward to it after a while.\nAnd one day.\nI don't know, I think I better tell you the other part first.\nMy dad wrote me a letter, which I still have.\nAnd because the first, the next thing I did was to call him and tell him that I had called AA.\nAnd I knew I was just going to shock him.\nAnd all he said to me was, thank God.\nThank God.\nSo he wrote a letter to me about the things that he thought,\nthat were useful to him early on in his recovery.\nAnd I still have it, and I treasure it.\nAnd it was just a really nice thing for him to do.\nAnd I've held on to that.\nAnyway, he told me not to hang out with anybody I'd already been hanging out with, you know.\nAnd some other handy tips and stuff like that.\nBut I didn't pay much attention either, you know.\nSo some people invited me out on a boat.\nAnd these were people that I had met at the hospital because of the work.\nAnd I knew I didn't have any business.\nI didn't have any business doing that.\nAnd I got out on the boat, and they didn't, I guess they ran out of Pepsi\nbecause I started drinking beer.\nAnd I did, I knew.\nYou know in the book where Jim, Jim says, I had this feeling that I wasn't being real smart.\nYou know, I had that feeling.\nBut of course, I went ahead and drank it anyways.\nAnd it was ugly.\nAnd I got, I was really messy and bad.\nAnd I, and.\nThe next day I thought, oh dear God, maybe I really am an alcoholic.\nMaybe I am.\nAnd I got afraid.\nAnd here's the other funny thing is, it, I, what I wanted to do was to get back to AA.\nAnd me, I thought I knew so much about alcoholism and about AA.\nI didn't know if they would let you back in.\nIf you drank.\nSo, so, and I still remember, I'm driving back to an AA meeting.\nAnd I was thinking, suppose they don't let you in.\nAnd I thought, well, I'll just con them.\nThat's how I lived.\nYou know, I'll talk them into letting me back in.\nBut that's how I, you know, don't worry about it.\nI'll take care of it.\nOh jeez.\nI just, what a jerk.\nAnyhow, I went back.\nAnd they greeted me.\nAnd there was a.\nThere was a little guy named, there were three Bills in the group.\nAnd you know in AA, if you have a common name, you're Big Bill, Little Bill, Wild Bill,\nwhat, Bill with the truck, Bill with the glove, what, you know.\nBut anyways, this was Bill, Bill, and Bill.\nAnd Little Bill, his grammar wasn't up to my standards.\nSo I would just sit there while he talked and, and think snotty things.\nI would just, you know, I was just.\nI already told you I was a jerk.\nI don't.\nI guess I don't have to tell you some more stories about my being a jerk.\nBut I was.\nAnd, and, and, and still not in the real world either, you know.\nAnyway, when I walked back into AA, and I said that I'd had a slip, one of the people\nwho was so kind to me was Little Bill.\nAnd boy, did that ever get to me.\nHe was a better.\nHuman than I am.\nAnd so anyways, they let me back in.\nAnd I knew that one of the things that I was missing was a sponsor.\nThat's just one of the things.\nBut that was.\nAnd, but on the way to that meeting, I prayed, genuinely prayed and asked God that if he\nwould show me who to ask, I would ask them to be my sponsor and I would do whatever they\nsaid.\nAnd during that meeting, I knew clearly who to ask.\nI absolutely knew.\nAnd he was a retired Navy captain who I had had almost nothing to do with during those\nfirst three, four months when I was flitting in and out and being the hostess and stuff.\nAnd Mac had nothing to do with me either.\nYou know, I didn't look like much of a person.\nI didn't look like much of a person.\nI didn't look like much of a prospect.\nBut anyway, I knew that's who I was to go to.\nAnd he used to enjoy telling the story of at the end of the meeting, at the Amen, I\npinned him against the wall and asked him if he would be my sponsor.\nThat wasn't much of a proposition to him.\nIt wasn't very exciting, I don't think.\nBut anyway, what he said was that he would call his sponsor because I was female.\nHe said.\nYou know, I'll talk to my sponsor about it.\nAnd in the meantime, he picked up the pamphlet, Questions and Answers on Sponsorship.\nAnd he told me that I should read that through and that he would talk to me about it on Saturday.\nAnd I said, okay.\nWow.\nI didn't expect him to take it that seriously.\nI don't know what I expected.\nBut at any rate, I knew he was the guy.\nI knew it.\nAnd so Mac came to my house on Saturday.\nAnd he talked to me about that pamphlet.\nHis sponsor was a guy named Paul B. from Washington, D.C.\nPaul B.'s sponsor was a guy named Buck D. from Baltimore.\nBuck D.'s sponsor was Bill Wilson.\nAnd so these guys, they were very clear and serious about Recovery and Alcoholics Anonymous.\nAnd they knew about, you know, Bill was a visionary, but he envisioned a chain.\nAnd they talked about that.\nAnd Mac was serious about it.\nAnd they talked about it.\nAnd he talked about having a family and a family in\nprivate convinances.\nAnd, you know, my own family did it.\nAnd, you know, we kind of reached a dieser situation and I was on my side of the aisle,\nyou know, and transformed.\nWe're both clearly an回來 guide.\nThat's it.\nThat's it.\nGreat.\nsometimes four or five states away.\nI said, okay.\nHe had some other conditions,\nthat I was supposed to go to a meeting\nif there was a meeting in the town, and whatever,\nand that my regular, if I was in town,\nI had to go to more meetings and stuff,\nand I, but he laid out a whole, like, requirements,\nand was I willing to agree to that?\nAnd I said, yes.\nAnd that's a good time to catch people, you know?\nLike, you know, while they're still like, whoo.\nSo anyway, then he said,\nI want you to pay attention every day\nand tell me about these peculiar, strange things that occur\nthat shouldn't happen, but they do,\nand they're in your favor,\nand some good things, some, you know,\nyou're hoping for something,\nand there it is, or whatever,\nbut start paying attention, start waking up,\nand tell me about those things.\nAnd I said, okay.\nI really didn't understand what he was talking about,\nbut I agreed.\nThat week, I was driving from Baltimore to Pennsylvania,\nand I reached in the back of the car to get my jacket,\nand I couldn't find it,\nso I pulled over,\nand opened the car.\nMy car had been broken into,\nand everything had been taken out of it, stolen.\nAnd I just flipped out.\nI went, whack-a-mole, you know?\nAnd I drove to the hotel that I was going to in Pennsylvania,\nand I went right to the restaurant,\nand I ordered a drink.\nAnd the waitress said,\noh, I'm sorry, dear, it's election day in Pennsylvania,\nand we don't serve liquor.\nOh, my God.\nAnd I thought, wait till Mac hears this one.\nAnd so I had my dinner,\nand I went up and I called Mac,\nand I told him what happened.\nAnd that was an interesting practice,\nand I still try and do it.\nIf you pay attention,\nthe evidence starts to mount up.\nYou accumulate evidence\nthat there's more going on around here than we know about,\nand it's silly to call them coincidences,\nbecause, you know, but of course we do.\nAnd I started calling them coincidences\nand reporting them to Mac and thinking.\nBut the pile of evidence was building.\nHe was walking me through the second step.\nI was coming to believe that there was a power.\nSomething was going on, and I was not causing it.\nI didn't cause that to happen.\nI couldn't have.\nSo anyway, Mac was my sponsor, but I started getting involved.\nI was involved in Young People's Group.\nThere was going to be this international conference\nof young people in AA in Toronto.\nAnd everybody that I knew,\nwhich was a handful of young people at that time,\nthat's all there were,\nwe were all going to go to this conference in Toronto.\nAnd as the time got closer, everybody else peeled off,\nso I went by myself.\nI got in the car.\nI drove to Toronto.\nIt took me three days.\nI don't know why.\nIt's not a three-day drive.\nIt's not a three-day drive.\nAnd so I checked in.\nAnd here's all these really young people.\nAnd they were alive, and they were having a good time,\nand mostly from California, of course.\nBut their lives were not over, and it looked very attractive to me.\nWe knew about this conference because a guy who had co-chaired\nthe one the year before,\nin Denver, had sent flyers all over to every contact\nthat General Service had with any young people's group.\nSo it said,\nOn to Toronto, Don R.\nSo I put it together that one of the speakers there\nwas this Don R. from Denver.\nAnd I genuinely wanted to thank him for sending those flyers.\nAnd my...\nMy group got one, and that's why I was there.\nAnd I found him because he was one of the speakers there.\nAnd I said, Are you Don R. from Denver?\nAnd he had a big badge and said, You know, Don R. from Denver.\nAnd so I said, You're the reason I'm here.\nAnd we got married three weeks later.\nAnd I was like, Oh, my God, that's so awesome.\nI love it.\nYour standard AA.\nSo God bless him.\nI tell you, I always tell that story because it's my funny one.\nBut my really funny one, I think, is that on my flight from Baltimore to Denver,\nI was thinking, Geez, I hope I recognize him when I get off the plane.\nBut anyway, Don and I got married in 1968.\nAnd my sobriety date is May 5th of 1968.\nThis was in August of 68.\nSo I was just a little more than three months sober.\nDon was the old timer.\nHe'd been sober for three years by then.\nSo anyway.\nI moved to Denver.\nI got active in the intergroup there.\nI got active.\nThere was a big young people's group there.\nAnd they were dead serious.\nAnd there was a bunch of them.\nAnd you know what?\nA lot of us are still in touch.\nA lot of them have passed on, to tell you the truth.\nBut a lot of us are still in touch.\nMost of them stayed sober.\nAnd most of them got active.\nThere have been two trustees that came from that ragtag bunch.\nAnd a number of, like, delegates.\nAnd really serious service people who have used their lives for good,\nI think, in a lot of ways.\nAnyway.\nFrom there, Don decided that he wanted to move to Texas, for God's sakes.\nI didn't want to move to Texas.\nTexas is hot.\nThey've got funny bugs there.\nI didn't want to go.\nBut the next mistake I made was that because Don was so popular,\nI went around being Mrs. Don.\nYou know, you've seen it, maybe you've done it, but I just,\nif Don thought it was a good meeting, I thought it was a good meeting.\nYou know, I just kind of abdicated, I let go of the things\nthat were holding me together.\nAnd I didn't realize that that's what I was doing.\nAnd nobody made me do it.\nI just did it.\nI was Mrs. Don.\nAnd I just walked around.\nSo anyway, there we were in Texas, and I was Mrs. Don.\nSo I wasn't in a real strong position at this point.\nAnd then Don said one Sunday, he said, I need to talk to you.\nIt was a football game on, and I said, well, can it wait until the half?\nAnd he said, no, I really need to talk to you, Mary Jane.\nI said, oh, okay.\nSo I turned off the TV, and he said, I've been drinking.\nAnd so I now was standing on nothing again.\nSo anyhow, I wanted him to go to upstate New York,\nto this place that we knew about that would, I'm sure, put him back together.\nAnd he wasn't interested.\nAnd so I called him up and asked him if I could come.\nI said, because I'm crazy as a loon.\nI haven't had a drink in a year, but I'm nuts.\nAnd they let me come up, and I went there for the basic stay,\nand I got a lot of very good help up there.\nI did a fourth and fifth step.\nI went up there, and I had started to have a sponsor in Texas,\nand then I was going back to that sponsor,\nand they told me what to do about going back\nand to start to have a real recovery program of my own again.\nAnd I did, and so did Don.\nDon got sober again there\nand was able to have a very significant recovery experience\nafter that.\nAnd he was able to do that as well and used his life for good.\nOur son was born there.\nWe lived there for about five years, I guess.\nBut then Don decided that that community was so great\nthat we should go live there.\nI didn't want to go live there.\nThat was the emergency room, you know.\nYou get up at five in the morning, you chant from the Psalms,\nyou scrape paint, you eat comfrey leaves.\nI didn't want to live there, you know.\nShh.\nBut anyways, we moved up to Eastridge.\nBut I got a lot of help from those folks, too.\nOn a daily basis, something will come back to me\nthat I first learned there.\nRepetitive prayer.\nLots of different things that were very helpful to me.\nAnyway, after that, then Don said,\nnow I don't want to be a member of this community anymore.\nI want to move to Nashville, and I want to start my business over.\nAnd I said, well, I'm done, you know.\nThe marriage had run out of gas.\nI was worn out, and I just, I couldn't see going further.\nAnd so Don moved to Nashville, started his business again.\nI got to go back into school.\nI was in the class of 60 that I should have been graduating from college.\nNow I'm in the class of 80, gifted.\nAnyway.\nBut the chances of my getting into the program that I got into\nare about that big, and I got in.\nSo it was one more time when I got to call Mac\nand tell him about what had happened that day.\nI got accepted into a PA program\nat a time where it was a really hot way to make a living,\nand you couldn't get into a program, and I did.\nAnyway, it was a great story.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nAt any rate, I did get back to school.\nMy son was little and started in the preschool and stuff like that.\nWe had a really good experience.\nWe lived in Illinois for about five years.\nAnd then I was with the VA system,\nand they have this network of job opportunities that open up.\nAnd if something opens up anywhere, you get a notification of it.\nWell, there was a notification for a physician assistant.\nAnd it was in Providence, Rhode Island.\nAnd it had everything but my name on it.\nAnd I thought, it's time to go home.\nSo that was in 85.\nAnd I moved to Providence.\nI went to the International in Montreal that year\nand then settled in Providence\nand worked there in a very good way for the rest of 20 years until I retired.\nThe place I grew up in was in Providence.\nThe places that I had lived kind of precluded my getting active in the general service structure.\nI lived in little towns and in funny places and didn't stay very long in any of them.\nBut when I moved back to Rhode Island, I started to get interested.\nLike, what is this stuff, the GSR business and all that?\nAnd a lady came to my home group.\nIt took me a while to find it, but Friday Night Big Book is the group that I joined.\nAnd she came to the business meeting,\nand she said, you know, this group doesn't have a GSR, a general service representative,\nso we're making decisions for you.\nAnd that hooked me.\nI thought, really?\nSo I talked to her about it later, and she invited me to come to the district meeting.\nSo I went.\nI got elected GSR.\nPretty soon I got active in cooperation with the professional community,\nwhich seemed like a natural,\nand I cared about that.\nPeople in the medical profession do have the opportunity to work with active alcoholics\nand recognize them and offer them help and stuff like that.\nIt all just made sense to me.\nIt seemed like something really worthwhile to do.\nSo I got really interested and then active in that.\nEventually I stood for delegate in Rhode Island and got elected.\nAnd I got to serve Rhode Island as the delegate to the general service structure.\nI got to serve in the general service conference,\nwhich meets once every year to take care of all of AA's business in New York.\nNow I'm getting interested and active in our history and where it all came from\nand how it started and why and how important it was.\nAnd, boy, I just gobbled it up.\nThe conference is something that I couldn't even begin to describe to you.\nI'll just tell you that I wouldn't take anything away from it.\nIt was a great experience.\nIt was a great experience.\nIt was a great experience.\nI wouldn't take anything for that experience.\nIt's not only alcoholics.\nThere are very, very significant people who recognize what we have here.\nAnd I'm talking about Class A trustees.\nThey're non-alcoholic and they serve Alcoholics Anonymous for nothing.\nThey give their time and energy and expertise.\nAnd some of them get it better than we do.\nThey are very respectful of AA and our traditions.\nAnd it's inspirational to see the effect that AA has on some people\nthat wouldn't have any other connection with alcoholism or AA.\nThey really appreciate what we have here better than we do, by and large.\nAnyway, I was more than inspired.\nI just gobbled it up.\nI loved it.\nI was...\nIt was hard and long and I wouldn't take anything for it.\nAfter that, in Rhode Island, you automatically become the state convention chair.\nSo I got to do that for two years after you retire as delegate.\nAnd then it was time to elect a regional trustee.\nThose are the Class B trustees.\nThat's easy to remember.\nClass A are the amateurs.\nClass B are the boozers.\nSo it was time to elect a boozer and that was me.\nI got elected to serve as the Northeast Regional Trustee.\nAnd I had the best, best, best time.\nI loved it.\nI can prove to you that you can't do a full-time job and be a trustee and all this other stuff.\nIt can't be done.\nAnd I did it for four years.\nAnd I loved it.\nThe time commitment is huge, but I've never been happier.\nEverything that I got the opportunity to do, it was the fastest period of time in my whole\nlife.\nIt flew by and I will be eternally grateful for the opportunity.\nIt was just an overwhelming experience.\nAnd so, if any of you guys are interested about general service, I hope you'll pursue\nit.\nIt will be well worth whatever you can bring to that activity.\nBob D. talks about God as being a cosmic loan shark.\nYou think you're paying him back, but when you pay, you get more and you never break\neven.\nIt's, you know.\nYou're trying.\nYou think that you're devoting, you think you're getting ahead and that you're demonstrating\nyour gratitude.\nWell, when you do that, you get so much more out of it.\nSo you're behind again.\nThat was my experience, though.\nI never felt like I was able to offer as much as I got from the whole deal.\nI've got to go.\nBye.\nBye.\nI think that's essentially my whole real description of what I was like and what happened\nto me and what I'm like now.\nNot much, but I'm the best person I've ever been and it's because of Alcoholics Anonymous.\nIt really, really is.\nIt's, well, I've done all that I could ever ask and more.\nI'm grateful for it.\nSo thank you so kindly for having me here tonight and thanks for your kind attention.\nJerry, thank you for a wonderful dinner.\nJerry, thank you for a wonderful dinner.\nJerry, thank you for a wonderful dinner.\nJohn, I can't thank you enough for your friendship and your invitation,\nand I'm very grateful to have been here.\nThank you kindly, John.