The Joy of Living and the Pain That Came Before It – Leo G.

I have a guest from Ocean City, Maryland who has been so kind to the Midtown Group, I know for sure, and made his home group available to us as a home group away from our home group. And he's a great friend. And with that, I'll give you Leo. isn't that nice a hug and everything else my name is Leo I'm an archaeholic and I was wacky and then I drank I was the youngest of six kids I was born in Brooklyn, and that's probably not important to anybody but me. And my old man worked in a bank during the Depression. He had nine dependents, and he made $70 every 15 days, you know? And we had a lot of soup, you known? Sometimes you knew what was in the soup, and sometimes you didn't, but it was soup, and alcohol is epidemic in my family my grandfather went to work in a shipyard in Brooklyn and he didn't drink except if they got knocked off when it was raining and he went to work and it rained and he hasn't been home in a hundred years and my grandmother on my father's side she used to go on what they call bats she took off for a couple of days and left all the kids home and so my grandfather owned the coal barges and he had to come off the boat to take care of the wife and my father who was about 10 or 11 years old how to get out of school to go work on the boats. And so, you know, women got beat in the family and they didn't call them alcoholics. They called them that drunken bastard, you know? And a lot of trouble, you know? And as I said, I was the youngest of six kids. And by the time I was ready to go to school, I knew A to Z, one to ten and the colors of the rainbow, you know? And I think that's all you've got to know and there's a matter of application and I went I think somewhere around the fifth grade or something I don't know what happened but the the boogeyman moved into my life and I had a knot in the pit of my stomach and uh and I I was never comfortable I had tremendous for a guy on my side I had a tremendous amount of energy and I could never get tired and I used to like to hit people and and I did that and I graduated from grammar school and I went to high school for about 20 minutes and I had enough education and of course my mother and father didn't know this and I used to ride the subways all day for a nickel you'd do 125 miles and I became an expert on the New York subway system how to get from the Bronx, the Queens to Manhattan, Brooklyn and finally I was doing just at the World War II and I told a guy tell a teacher I joined the Marines and I got killed someplace. So nobody ever contacted my mother and let her know I wasn't, I didn't know how compulsive I was. I went on a hook for one day and then go to school for a year and a half, you know? And finally they found out my old man had to go up and sign that thing, you now, and I dropped out of school and my old male was crying and I was laughing. Not laughing, what the hell does he know? you know and I was 16 years old and somebody got me a job and I you know I was a messenger in downtown Manhattan and then if you got your route done quick and you come back in the office and they'd give you a couple envelopes to type up and I didn't know but I was a second apprenticeship and firstly I know I wasn't a messenger no more, I was working in the office and then I was answering the phone and then I was taking orders and I was learning a little bit here and there and I worked for a man and he was an alcoholic and he came into the office one day with a half a load on and he smacked me boom you know hey some profound statement or easy does it or something like that you know and I waited for him to come off the elevator the next morning and I said to him if you think he was as tough today as you were yesterday I'll knock you right on your you know what and and he apologized I knew he was experiencing remorse and guilt so I laid it on him you know and that afternoon he came over to me and he said I've been invited down to a ship, ship's party down in Brooklyn would you like to come down I'm not going to drink so I called my wife and I told her I'm going to the party and she said okay we're down a ship oh it was lovely I had lobsters all over the place. It was a Danish ship, lobstERS and cheese and just a lovely display. And they had champagne in big bottles. I don't know what you call them, but they were big. I said to the girl, get me a big glass and leave a bottle over here. And I was with the boss and he wasn't drinking. and then the party ended and I remembered he hit me yesterday he's going into the East River it didn't quite succeed that way I only had him over the rail and people jumped in and they got me off the ship. I don't remember leaving the ship and he took me home. They got a cab. He took me back and he came up to the apartment to tell my wife how sorry I was for the condition and he didn't have a drink and then I got another brilliant idea while he was in the kitchen. I grabbed him by the tie and he was turning blue my wife said and she had to cut the tie off him with a pair of scissors and with that I went in to throw up and I tripped and I got my head caught between the toilet bowl and the tub and my life was becoming unmanageable it wasn't unmanageable yet and I get up in the morning and I took a shower and I said where are you going I said I'm going to work see you ain't got a job and when I got off the elevator he was standing where I had stood the day before and he put his arm around me let's go around the corner and talk and he said you know if you didn't show up I was going to fire you and I said I'd give him God, motherhood and the American flag and he said I can't fire you he put his arm around me he said I can not fire you you are like my twin and it was true and we did not know it prior to all of this the part I am telling now is I was married prior to getting married I was in a bar I left we practiced a program of take my inventory well I got great enjoyment of taking other people's inventory that was I think I was magna cum laude in that you know and I was in a bar one night and I seen a guy and I was going to get a piece of him and for some reason or other I walked out of the bar and I was amazed with this intelligence I just got a piece of and I was going home and I decided I'm going to sit on a stoop here and go to sleep because from where I was to where I go home there were a lot of combat areas but my newfound intelligence I was going to set up and I'm not going to sit on the stoop the next thing I know I'm standing up and there's a cop laying on his back on the sidewalk with a gun pointing at me and I can't tell you that night and I don't know and I Can't Tell You Today How That Cop Got There but with the gun pointing at my I had instant sobriety boom, I was sober and he said march and I marched like a West Point cadet and on the way over to the priest and a friend of my sister's who just closed his bar sees me with a gun at my back and he's going to give me a character reference by the time I got to the police station everything was taken care of you know I didn't get arrested I have never been arrested I don't have the psychiatric history because they didn't catch me and that's how I had the solution to that problem with the policeman I'm gonna get married that's gonna be the solution to that and my wife took care of what the women take care of and I took care of the honeymoon and we went to the Statue of Liberty you know I can see the Statue a little bit from my kitchen window and she wanted it she had planned on going to Florida, you know? And we're both very fair-skinned and we didn't go to Coney Island because we got sunburned, you now? So I had a mace in a hole and she wanted to see a coconut tree, a banana tree. We had them in the botanical gardens in Brooklyn, you kno? Don't get excited and everything's gonna be fine. And we went to Greenwich Village for two weeks and I'd buy her a shrimp cocktail and a highball, and I'd have $35 worth of beer, you know? And it was wonderful. And then the incident with the boss, you know, and now I remember before I got married when I'd come home and my father locked the door for me inside. so when I'd come staggering home whenever I did and he'd open the door and he threw a right hook and I'd get hit that was okay and then my mother would start screaming do you know what you're doing to me do you Know What You're Doing To Us I really didn't know because I didn't intend to harm anybody and when I got married I wanted to be like my father. I wanted to be a good husband and a good father and it didn't quite work out that way and after we were married I come home and my wife would say she would scream, you know, do you know what you're doing to me and do you Know What You're Doing To Us and I couldn't comprehend what she meant. I didn't mean to hurt nobody you know the fact that I come home with no shirt on I left the house I had a suit and jacket tie, I come back home I had no shirt people were picking on me and I had to defend myself you know and I went out one night and I had a breakup with my best friend and I met him and it was during Lent and you could drink on Sunday but you had to stop at midnight and we were drinking and I said it's only 11 o'clock in Chicago like another hour. I got home about two o'clock Tokyo time you know and she didn't understand and I couldn't understand her not understanding you know I was in a bar one night arguing, and the guy I was arguing with was making a chump out of me. You know, I had the words in my head, but they wouldn't come out of my mouth to defend myself. So I grabbed him by the throat. And when he couldn't talk no more, I won the argument. Made a hell of a lot of sense to me, you know? and we had two kids in the first two years we were married that was very good for me it slowed down the drinking I got a lot of pleasure out of the kids and I don't know whether progression was setting in or the novelty of the kid's wearing off but I started to go out on Friday night to watch the fights on television or to go up and watch a shuffleboard game. And I would sincerely tell my wife, I'll be home by midnight. And again, you know, I got home midnight, drunk time, you now, when that's six o'clock in the morning, you know? It's almost. And the agony and listening to this woman scream and I wanted to hit her. And I know if you hit a woman, you are automatically alcoholic. And I hit walls and I hit refrigerators and I did a lot of things but I never hit her and it was the job. I was getting passed over for promotions and the boss told me, he said, give everybody a raise but you, Leo. I said, screw you. I get enough to get drunk on Friday and said, you know what the hell I need you for? I need a raise. The whole thing... And when I was... When I wasn't drinking, I did a good job on the job. And then the boss, who I almost threw in the river, he met a guy like me and he got his head smashed in and he wasn't the boss no more. He was a vegetable, you know? and so I had to leave that company because he was the only one who would tolerate my behavior and I called the guy said I'm looking for a job and 20 minutes later I had another job I had more money than I was leaving there must be nothing wrong with me and it went on you know bring the money home and And when I wasn't drinking, things were pretty good in the house. And then when I was drinking, it was horrible, you know. And there was a... And I couldn't see it. I didn't think alcoholics, because as a kid, I used to go down to New York Bowery and walk around. and I was very comfortable there and the people I like the people down there in Bowery and you know people want to go to the country or the beach for the summertime I'm going to go to Bowerym hang out with these guys one guy be selling his eyeglasses you know and I just for whatever odd reason I was always comfortable there but I didn't think I was an alcoholic. I knew they were alcoholics, but I couldn't be because by now the kids were getting a little bigger and I bought the missiles to take to church and we went that route for a long time or quite a while and so I couldnít be an alcoholic so the only thing left for me was insanity and I tried to figure out when I became insane because I knew at times I was insane the morning after proved to me you know when you got a black guy and a tooth missing you know and you come home with no shirt on you must be crazy yeah it must be crazy but I wanted to see if there was a pattern I couldn't and then what I discovered in sobriety the only time I was crazy is when I drank and when I wasn't drinking I wasn t crazy but I didn t know that at this time and then I got drunk and then hit this guy and the other guy I hit a guy one night I was in my early 20s and this guy when I was a little kid in school in grammar school this guy used to bully me around and now I had a load on and he had a lot on and he wasn t going to bully me tonight and I hit him and his head hit the ground and I don't think the human head is designed to make the noise that his head made when it hit the floor or hit the ground and I was terrified and a young policeman he ran to where we were and then the cop ran away oh I figured if he ran away I better run away I didn't know whether this guy was alive or dead and I was terrified and the kids wanted me to be daddy on Saturday and Sunday and I wasn't going to do that. I was horrified that somebody was going to knock on the door or the phone was going ring and read the paper to see if anybody got killed that night and the remorse and the guilt and the fear and the terror and the brother 13 months older than me he had gotten beat up in Korea and he died he was 34 years old and he died of wounds prescribed medication and a lot of booze he used to have his retirement check sent to Fitzgerald Saloon and his tab was there and it cleaned up for that month and me and him used to drink together and he was quite a hero in the Korean War and I used to tell him I see more combat in Brooklyn than he's seen in Korea which wasn't exactly the truth and I use to intimidate him and I got great pleasure out of intimidating him another brother was another guy, master sergeant they were both they were about 6 foot 2 6 foot 3 and this little punk was going to intimidate them and the one brother when I used to talk to him with my load on he used to stutter bup bup bup bup you know and I enjoyed the pleasure of making this guy nervous the two of them and I hit a guy one night with one of my brother Tommy and I tried to put the guy I hit he was unconscious I want to put him in a sewer just so that I wanted to impress my brother Tommy how tough I was you know and the insanity and then I got drunk and then my brother Tommy died we got a piece of the insurance money and then we could buy a house my wife knew somebody who had this house and it was lovely I was in the suburbs and my wife went and checked the school and the church and the stores you know and I I checked the saloons wherever they were and the railroad and I was drinking in the city and I get too drunk to take the railroad home I take a cab you know and knock on the door hey Mary I need fifteen dollars for the cab drive and however she did it she had it She'd always come up with it, and I was doing better on the job again. I was doin' better, and then the end came, you know? Her girlfriend come out and I tried to put the make on her girlfriend, which was absolutely not my style. I never bothered with women. I was frightened of women. And this night, I had my load on. I tried to put the make on her, and her husband was watching me, and he was about 6'9", I think, and I didn't worry about him all my life, you know. And then they left. And my wife said, I'm going to bed. and she went to bed and I was sitting there playing the Victrola I was writing a letter to the brother in Korea and I had pissing in my pants and that was wonderful you know drinking the beer pissing on my pants and listening to a record that says you only hurt the ones you love oh that was marvelous very marvelous you know and my wife come down and she said if you don't shut that damn Victrola off I'll step on the records and it came to me that's the problem horror I knew there was a problem never had a name and now it had a name it was horror and I called my sister-in-law in Boston and I told her I said I can't take no more of this mental anguish and I'm gonna get up playing and I'm going to come up and see you. And she said, come ahead. And I just got paid the night before and I couldn't find my wallet. I had two weeks paying and I couldn'T find a wallet. AndI went up, it was raining out. I called the cab and I had no money to leave the house. So I went up and I chased my daughter Susan out of the whole bedroom was his room with the other kids in there and I laid on a bed and I woke up on a Sunday afternoon and I had the raincoat on and it wasn't raining and I was in the bed with a raincoat and there wasn't rain inside the house or outside the house and I sat on the edge of the bed and the remorse and the guilt was I just couldn't live with it. I just, couldn't go downstairs and tell my wife I was sorry. I just couldn''t tell her one more time. And the only thing I was sorry about is that I was alive. I wished I was dead. And however I sat on the bed, I knew I wasn't gonna die and I was condemned to to live without hope. And I hope I never forget that feeling. I went downstairs and I called the A. I know we had an A in my parish in 1937. And I knew about A. And I called A. The guy says, A, can we help you? My name is Barney. Yeah, Barney, I said, I was crying and he said this was the Manhattan the New York intergroup office he said we'll try to get somebody to call you later locally and he did within a period of time I don't know how long it appeared a short period of time guy called me up he said my name is Joe and I'm from AA can we help you can I come over to your house and they come over to my house when I walked down the stairs from the bedroom and my wife and the four kids now and the feeling of aloneness in that house you could hear the silence and then Joe called and he said can we come over to your house and he came over with two other guys and one guy was his father-in-law Joe was an attorney and I didn't know you could talk to an attorney without handcuffs on I just never knew that and the other guy was his father-in-law he did home improvements and as sick as I was at that moment I said maybe if I'm nice I'll get a new kitchen and the other guy Marty, he was a truck driver he was sober a month and he had a head and he had shoulders but he had no neck this guy got to get an operation and they took me to a meeting they told me the secret in my kitchen and he told me if the first drink gets you drunk and that made sense to me bang, like that and I knew what he said I understood what he had said I understand at this moment and if he told me that the day before I called I would have smacked him they took me to a meeting called an open meeting there was three speakers one was a woman and they could talk about their alcohol about their drinking and I couldn't talk about it I didn't want me to talk about I didn' t want you to talk about my drinking and they gave me a cup of coffee let's sit in the front and I listened to these three speakers and I was very, very I got a lot of hope a lot or hope listening to these people speak of getting their lives in order and after the meeting Joe gave me about eight or nine pieces of literature and I went home and I'm so full of anxiety I saw almost your fury, and I couldn't talk. I had to tell my wife about all the wonderful people I met that night. I told her about I had a disease, and they told me if I didn't take one drink, I couldn'T get drunk. And I read the articles that they gave me, the pamphlets, and I could understand them. It was so simply written, I could understanding them, and I had A lot of hope that night, and they told me to pick me up the next night to take me to a meeting and Joe he called a guy by the name of Eddie and Eddie was he was a very gentle gorilla and it was what I needed and Eddie put his arm around me and he says how you doing kid and I said I'm a little nervous he says you know why I said no he says you're a bastard and I knew that he knew and however and it says in the big book here we will intuitively know how to handle situations and I know I knew Eddie wasn't going to hurt me and then he started to talk about the disease of alcohol and he told me about his insanity and my insanity he said if you don't pick up one drink you ain't goingto be crazy no more and that gave me a lot of hope and they took me to a group and I became my home group you know but when I got sober I didn't leave my disease at the door, I brought it right into the rooms you know, and the guy says to me, you know the big book is recommended you buy it cost four and a half dollars but if you haven't got four and a half dollars you can, you know, throw a quarter a week in, you now, until what does this guy think? I ain't got four and the half dollars? What the hell does he think I am? So I borrowed four and half dollars I bought the book you know and I read the book and it talked about me in little bits and pieces of garden variety drunk and, you know, questioning God. If there's a God, why do little babies die? Why do aeroplanes crash? And it talked about the mental obsession, the physical compulsion. I remembered my wife, I was going out on a Friday night, and my wife said, this might be the night you get killed and I walked down to the vestibule at the end of the stairs and I says yeah she might be right this might be the night I get killed but who cares I don't know you know so this book told me a lot about and I would listen to meetings at meetings And the first manifestation of my recovery is I started to hear better and with the help of a sponsor, you know. After the meeting he'd say to me, what do you think of this speaker? Oh, I didn't like him. Why? I don't know, but I just didn't' like him and we would stand in the parking lot for an hour and a half for him telling me what I just heard and it made sense after he told me you know but i didn't understand when the meeting was going on and i i learned i got a lot of aa a lot of sobriety was in the parking lot you know and uh and i needed every minute of these people who were who had more time and they explained to me you now and i became like this It says in the book, I think, about two-steppers. I became a three-stepper. My life was unmanageable. I wanted to be restored to sanity and I wanted to do 12-step work. I did everything but buy a white horse and go charging down when I got a phone call. And it took me a long time to that third step. I had an awful lot of trouble and I can see it with great clarity today, but I couldn't see it At that time, I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood Him. Well, I couldn't do it because I didn't understand God. And I'll turn my life over. But if I turn my Will over and things get screwed up, who are they going to blame? Me or you, you know? So I better turn my Wil over to me. And we went through that and frantic sobriety it was better than being drunk and I finally had to the ultimatum come from some place you're either going to change your attitude or you're going to drink so I had to turn my will over to something I turned it over to Eddie Clark and that was better than me and then we'd argue he said I got feet of clay you can't turn it over to me and agony. I can see with great clarity today I needed more pain. I didn't need more drink, just more pain and I finally got to turn my will and my life over to the care of God that I understood and that was very, very important to me and then the fourth step you know, the culture I come from says don't put nothing in writing you know? And the book says write it down. And I went down and I was in a lot of pain and I got paper and a pencil and I knew in my head what I was going to write, and I got polio and my arm wouldn't move. I couldn't. But I knew it was an effort, you know? And I needed more pain, you know, more pain. And I got the more pain. My sponsor, he was he wrote his fourth step he typed 32 pages 32 typewritten pages and I wrote one sentence so if you're having any trouble with the fourth step I think it's somewhere between one sentence and 32 pages and it probably fit in there somewhere and then the fifth step I thought it was the fifth amendment and I couldn't incriminate myself I had a lot of trouble with that one and then and then the sixth step that was well I needed pain pain and sobriety and I got it and I saw for two years I had to do it yourself from every breakdown I drove myself nuts I quit my job I laid on a couch I looked at the ceiling, I counted the squares, and my wife was going down to the Department of Social Service, you know. We were eating the cheese that says not for sale, you now. And I couldn't walk in the neighborhood in daylight hours for fear somebody would see me. And I got a meeting every night though. Somebody said, how was everything? I said, wonderful. You know, unemployed, not paying a mortgage. but I knew as bad as it was it was better than being drunk and somebody in AA got me a job and then you know, I went through I heard people talk about the joy of living that must have been another lifetime I didn't believe them and I went though the pain and I finally come to understand the joy of living. And I got through all the steps and things were getting better. The kids were getting a little bigger. My wife went to work and then I had, I think it was Andy Warhol, the guy from the 60s, says everybody should have 15 minutes of fame or whatever and I got my 15 minutes of fame. And the boss called me in, and it was, he said, I want you to go to Moscow. I said, what? I want your name. I want to get you to Moscow, you and another guy, another fellow by the name of Eddie. And we were going to Moscow to negotiate a contract with the Russian government. You know, for a guy that went to PS39, this wasn't a bad deal, you know. and we went there and it was, you know, when I was drinking in Brooklyn I couldn't get to the Bronx and now I saw but I'm going to Moscow and that fascinated me and we negotiated a contract with the Russian government and another guy I worked with he was a Russian and he knew that there was a railroad from St. Petersburg into Tehran, where the market was, and we could make a deal. We'd get cargo there in 22 days as opposed to going around Africa and take 40 days. So we had a lot of people who were interested in using our process. And I come back, and I had a right aim. And this turned out to be a very big deal but the State Department got involved and the Department of Federal Maritime Commission and I had to come back and write a tariff up to be approved by the U.S. government and I did it and I think, I don't know whether I did a good job or a bad job there because I was home about a month and the boss sent me to Africa and I said why? what the hell? I went to Africa for a month that was wonderful I had a lot of fun there and I met two two captains of American large American ships and for some reason they thought I was a captain and I didn't tell them anything different you know so and one of the ships when they came in got banged up a little bit and the captain said I don't know what to do I'll call Lloyd's or London like that they'll send the dives down check it out and they were very impressed but what I told them and what I taught them I learned in a saloon in Brooklyn and but they that was very interesting and and then I came back and and things were getting better and I didn't know it but what was happening I was starting to bring AA into the house see I was good at AA and I was good at my job but I wasn't good about bringing And I thought the least a wife could do was when I walked in the house just sing Hail to the Chief, you know? And I don't think I was asking too much, you know? And it wasn't quite that way. She used to say a phrase started with son of a something. I can't remember. But now AA was coming into the house Little, little, slow, little. And it got there. It got there and now I developed principles. I didn't have no principles when I got here and you know I had a lot of energy and fists that liked to hit people that's all I had and now I started to develop principles and I learned them in AA and I became a part of different people. My friend Joe D he had principles and I stole some of his and Jack Brennan had some and I stolen some of hers this lady and that man and this guy and then they became mine and then I found out about the joy of living this past winter January we went to Florida and we left the 27th of January and we were going to get a ship February 1st out of Tampa we were going to be four other couples that we've known for 30 years and we were going to go on this cruise and on the way down her wife says I can't see too good out of my left eye and you know I'm doing 65 miles an hour and I have compassion but I and she said it again the next day so I said to myself the next time I see something eyeglasses or I'll pull in there I pulled in there and the guy looked at a rye and he was an ophthalmologist and he said, I got good news and bad news. The bad news is you had a stroke behind your left eye. He says, the good news is it wasn't in your brain. He said, if it was in your mind, you might be in the nursing home drooling, you know? And he said... your vision is not coming back and yeah he said but there's another doctor about 25 miles down the road I want you to go see and we went down to see him another ophthalmologist and he confirmed what the first guy said then the second doctor said where are you going now where are we going when you leave here we said we're going over to Tampa and he uh he says another doctor in tampa i want you to see and so we've seen three ophthalmologists in two days you know and i think if you call an ophthalmist you run the appointment you get one in august you know virus and it was like getting the oil changed at both ends you know simultaneously for 24 hours you know and he had to take my wife to the third doctor and uh he said you know go on the go on a cruise and mike said thought i better see his doctor and i went to see his doc and the doctor said i think you have a bleeding ulcer right I said to myself, I don't get ulcers. I give ulcers, you know? And I took up a GI and go on a cruise, you know? Went on a Cruiseman. Had a wonderful time. And then I wanted to cut short the vacation to get back up to Maryland to be able to take my wife to her local doctors. And we get up there and she was fighting like hell. She didn't want to. I want to be on vacation, you know? I said, Larry, you know, we've got to get home. I want you to see the doctor. We went home. We got to see a doctor one morning, and she has heart failure in the doctor's office. And then the doctor called the EMS from there, from his office. They took her to the hospital, and I was driving to the house and I now had principles to practice. I was driving to the hospital I said don't panic easy does it, keep it simple you know turn your will over to God she survived and we drove over here yesterday and I like these I don't like the phrase young people of AA I just don't like it, it just rubs me the wrong way the way I like this address these people they're sober people who haven't had a lot of birthdays yet and they come down to our group 54 and they come in you know and they bring quality sobriety you know and you can see them interacting you know you know they're coming there's eight cars with surfboards on the top and they enhance our meeting and I am very privileged to make acquaintances with them and make friendships with them my friend Mike over here you know he's a fantastic guy he's the Pied Piper of AA that guy he wants to go to young people's meetings and I said Mike I got some white out for you think you're gonna have to change your id number you know but it's wonderful you know my my son is here with me today and that uh now he's frank the joy of living i have experienced it i have experienced despair i know what's better and nobody can shake me down say you did this i I said, yeah, I did that. I did that. And I was drunk and I'm very sorry for it, you know. And I found the God of my understanding very, very personal. And I think it's time to have a cup of coffee and I say thank you very kindly to everybody who's been involved here, these people who've done this job. I never drank in a place like this, you know. And the committee that my friend Bridget over here, and Arnold, you know. I said, I don't know, the last time I seen him he had shorts and a t-shirt on, you know? Look at him now. Thank you very kindly. Thank you, Leo, and thank you everybody for being here. Our next meeting's at 11 o'clock and we will close.