Audio
Transcript
Source: AA Participation Meeting – Desert AA Roundup – Palm Springs CA – Part Two (1983) – 1983-06-04.mp3 File: aa-participation-meeting-desert-aa-roundup-palm-springs-ca-part-two-1983-1983-06-04.mp3 Duration: 00:41:09
============================================================
A real dear friend of mine, dear, dear friend of mine, Johnny L. from Santa Fe Springs. Hi everybody, my name is Johnny, I'm an alcoholic. You know, my father God knows exactly what I need. I've been running from this podium for the last eight months. I've been asked to share here and there, and I make all kinds of excuses. And I don't know what it is, but I thank you for allowing me to be here. You know, the progression of this disease is astonishing, and I pursued it until the depths of hell.
In 1950, after making a lot of jails, and being in the service, and doing a lot of bad things in my neighborhood, and I was living in Watts at that time, you know, that place that they made famous, I didn't make it famous. Anyway, I couldn't handle life on life's terms, and I said, God, I've got to get away from the streets. Why is, you know, things, and I was wheeling and dealing and all that. And so, God opened up an avenue. He allowed us to have a brand new home, you know, and we moved to Santa Fe Springs.
I was 25 years old, and I was still wearing some good threads, and zoot-zoot hats, and all them things. You know, walking that walking, talking that walking. And I wanted to do this thing right. I don't know how many kids by that time we had, and it wasn't important. What I wanted to do was start life anew. And I went down to that house and tried to do everything I knew how to do as a good father, good husband.
You know, I started a patio, I started building the fence, I started building this, and I started building that, you know. Somewhere in 1968, man, I came to. This house was completely gone, and the roof was leaking, and the window panes were broken and had cardboard on them, and linoleum over linoleum, and the springs were coming out of the furniture, and the lampshades were gone, and, you know, all this kind of crap.
And I came to, and I didn't know what happened, you know, the progression of this disease. And I tried, I tried, I tried my damnedest, and I didn't know how to come out of that thing. And so the program was brought to my home by my sister-in-law, and little by little, man, I started coming to the meetings one day, and it was because of the end result of a surrender. And I'll tell you how it happened to me.
I was at a job somewhere about February the 12th, 1969, and I couldn't do it no more. I couldn't handle life on last terms. And I was trying to cut down, and I couldn't. And if I cut down on drinking, I'd use more chemicals. And if I used more chemicals, I didn't drink. And, you know, and I was deathly sick. I was urinating blood, relieving blood, and spitting blood. And I couldn't handle it no more.
And this morning came about like any other morning. I don't know what I took going to the job that morning. I remember how I felt. I couldn't handle it, you know. And I went out, and they got me a half-pound of Jim Beam and three cans of Bergeron. And I had about a triple left to put in a locker. I said, well, you know, in case I need it. Somewhere about 1.30, man, I just, you know, couldn't handle this.
I went back to that bottle, and I looked at that bottle. And I had been to one meeting. You know, here's where God come into my life, you know. Action is the magic word around here. And all I did was look at that thing, and I said, man, I can't handle this no more. God, please help me, you know. It's the first time in my life that I actually surrendered to me or to anything, you know. And it was a gift of trying it right then and there.
I hadn't even opened up the book as yet. I didn't know nothing about alcoholics. I've been to one meeting, you know. And I said, just maybe, just maybe if I go to those meetings, something can happen. You know, something. And so that was a Wednesday, as I found out later. And Friday night, I went to a, the wife was going to a meeting with her sister. And she said, I'm going to go to the Rose Theater meeting.
I said, no, no, I would like to go, you know. So I went to my first meeting for me. And it was a Friday night. And I raised my hand when they asked for newcomers. And I didn't raise my hand. I raised my hand when they asked for visitors. And for 33 days, man, I raised my hand and said, it's a visitor, you know. And one day, the gift was given to me, you know. And I hadn't even opened up the book. Surrender was given to me.
And I believed then that I was under the wings of God, you know. And through the end result of the steps, I become in the presence of God. But that day, that 33 days later, I conceded to my innermost self that I was an alcoholic. Things happened from that day on. I was in the middle of the meeting. And everything was said that I was supposed to hear about this disease. I'm cut a little bit short. But anyway, right in the middle of the meeting, I raised my hand.
I said, my name is John. I'm an alcoholic. And God, it felt good. I remember going home. And I remember sleeping with John for the first time, comfortable, you know. And from then on, my whole life changed.
[00:05:00]
So the end result, I have done a lot of things in Alcoholics Anonymous. Been in a lot of places and shared a lot. What I'm trying to get is what happens to us here, you know. The terrible will and frustration and despair that we feel or have felt out there, we say that after we apply the principles and start living this new way of life, it never happens to us. Let me share this with you before I sit down.
The terrible will and frustration and despair that we went out there were a good experience. In sobriety, eight years in sobriety, I experienced this. And it happened this way. I started to play golf. And I came to this roundup and played my first 18. On the way home, my back got bad. And I got home and started unpacking on Sunday morning, right after the roundup. And my little girl asked me to fix her car in the backseat.
And you know how you're going to look for that bottle way in the back of the seat? That's the way I had to bend over, way down and bend over. And I coughed, and something happened back here. I don't know what happened. I couldn't lift up my back. I couldn't move. I couldn't nothing. And I've had back problems, you know. And that was an awful, awful pain. I couldn't sit up or sit down or walk or anything.
And it was a Sunday, and they took me to the crack doctor in the neighborhood, and he couldn't do nothing. By the next morning, I was too swollen anyway. They shoved me in the car and took me to the chiropractor. He said, I'm sorry, you're too swollen. You've got to put ice on it, and you've got to wait a couple of days, and then I can operate or, I mean, fix you up or try to start doing some work on you.
So in the meanwhile, I had to just lay and put some ice on it, and that was an awful pain. And I couldn't handle it. I just could not handle it. Eight years of sobriety. The wife came in and saw this thing on me, this terrible wound, frustration, despair, the face, and she saw it a million times. She knew something was wrong. She said, can I get you anything? I said, give me a drink. You know, if I could have reached out for a drink or fixed a joint, anything, I would have just taken that right there to ease this physical pain.
What has happened to me is I put a film between God and I, you know. And what I'm trying to tell you is this thing works like I was telling you. It works, it works good. She saw this thing. She saw it a million times. And, you know, she works out of these principles, too, and she knows how this thing works. So she dialed my sponsor, man, and tried to get a hold of him. And Johnny H., you can't get a hold of him, day or night.
And in five minutes, man, I got a call, you know, and he kind of smoothed me down, put me in the presence of God again. You know, chapter 7 of our book says, the surest community against drinking is the intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when all other activities fail. Whether you're pitching or catching, it works. You know, I experienced something like that, and I got back in tune in this business of living.
What I'm trying to share is that here I am, trying to not be around this podium. And it's the only real insurance that I have is sharing me with you. I'm sure glad I got to share a little bit here. It's fantastic being here. I love you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Johnny. Dave? Thank you. Good morning. I'm Dave M., a grateful alcoholic. Good morning. You know what happened this morning? I kept breathing sober.
And I've been privileged to be doing that every damn morning for the last little over six years. And that's a miracle in itself, having not wanted a drink today. It hasn't entered my mind. And that's something else too. I've got to share something that happened just real recent with me. Just a month ago, the 1st of May, my mother passed away. Now, that was not a real sad time in my life. I didn't grieve an awful lot about it.
And I'll tell you why. It's that I'm sober a little over six years. About eight or nine years ago, I was taking care of my mother. My mother, she lived in a place I had in L.A. And all of a sudden, I found out that my sister was coming out from Boston. To pick her up, I found this out the day before my sister was coming. And to take her back east with her to Boston and live with her for the rest of her life.
See, through my alcoholism, my mother was running away from me.
[00:10:04]
And I felt bad, a terrific amount of guilt. But I knew I just couldn't take care of her anymore. Well, here about the end of April last year, I got a letter from my mother. She was just like I always used to be. She was kind of a pain in the neck a lot of times and very difficult to live with. And she wrote me a letter and said that she would like to come out for a visit. And talking with the other kids back east, my two brothers and my sister, that she had worn out her welcome back there.
So I wrote her a letter, showed it to my wife, and my wife agreed to it, that we'd be happy to have her come out and spend the rest of her life with us. And she did. And her gal that I more or less ran out of town eight or nine years ago, she spent 51 weeks with us before she passed away. And see, I'm the last person in the world she would ever want her to come back to. But she knew I was in a program.
I had seen her once about three years ago, sober. And she knew that I was living a different life. She didn't know how. She didn't think an awful lot about AA, really. She just knew that my life was different. And you people in this program and the God I found in this program gave me the opportunity for 51 weeks, day in and day out, to make my amends to her while she was still alive. I didn't have that opportunity with my dad.
I buried him while I was still drinking. But you gave me this beautiful, tremendous opportunity. And the last day, which was the day she died, we patted friends and in peace with each other. Now, as I said, it wasn't a time for terrible grieving. It was a time for just nice remembrances of the good times we had together and my feeling for the privilege of being able to make my amends on a daily basis, whether it was just fixing her a cup of tea in the morning or what have you.
Those things I never would have had had God not brought me to this program. And I found you people. And not just been told or read how to read the steps or how to take the steps or what have you, because that didn't work for me very well. See, what I had to do was I had to see the example that you people were doing, day in and day out. And it's not just when we're in an AA meeting that counts a hell of a lot.
It's what we're doing at home, how we're attempting to work our program at home, just how serious we are. And I've seen that example from you people. And you're the ones that have interpreted the program to me for your actions about the idea of your ability to take something that was a shell of a human being, guide me through the first four or five months when I didn't but just barely function, hold on to me.
Somebody mentioned being held in cotton arms. That's how I felt. That's how I realized the day you did. And just keep me going one more day, one more day. And you know what happens today? I have absolutely everything I need in life. My wife and I just celebrated our 28th anniversary together, and that's super. A young man sitting there in the audience here tonight, he's my favorite nephew. He's got, I think it's 16 months of sobriety in this program today.
And all of these things that I have today is directly from you. And when I ask God the questions, when I pray about a certain thing that's going on in my life, he's never yet come down and tapped me on the shoulder. But you know what I found out? That in a very short while, I'll be in a place. In a very short while, I'll be in a private conversation with one of you.
[00:15:02]
Or maybe you'll just be pitching up here, and I'll get my answer directly from God through you. I love this program, and I love you people. Thank you very kindly. That redhead that was up here is married to a man that I love very much, and I'd like to ask you to come up and share with us. Did you say everything you wanted to say? Hello. Hello. How are you doing? Good. There is a principle. Shut up.
Which is a bar to all information. Which is proof against all argument. And which cannot fail. To keep a man in everlasting ignorance. That principle is contempt prior to investigation. Good evening. I am Beverly D.' husband, Hugh, and I am an alcoholic. Our stories should disclose in a general way what we were like, what happened, and what we're like now. And what I have just told you is what I was like.
I was born and raised in southern Missouri in a Baptist Bible belt. So when I got into Alcoholics Anonymous, I was not an atheist, nor an agnostic. There has never been a case of atheism or agnosticism back in that part of the country, yet they will not tolerate it. What I was, was an egoist. Now, I don't know how many of you people have ever been in southern Missouri, but if any of you ever visit back there, I'll tell you something very simple.
There are two kinds of people. There are Baptists and heathens. And if you want to know which is which, it's very simple. You just look at them. The heathens are smiling. Now, I am sure that the Baptist Church knows about God. However, I am not sure that God knows about the Baptist Church. However, I am not sure that God knows about the Baptist Church. And yet, as much fun as I make of that church, and as much as I ridicule it from time to time, I'd like to tell you that everything they said would happen, happened.
Every bit of degradation, every bit of shame, every bit of embarrassment, they said would happen, happened, just as they said it would. So that's what happened. Now you wonder what I'm like now, huh? Well, I am a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I am a member of the Chatsworth Participation Group, where some people might out there tell you I have blown my brains out. The truth is I did not commit suicide.
I do try to work an honest program, and I have learned a few things over the years about Alcoholics Anonymous and how it works. And you heard Phyllis say that she and John have been married something like 18, 19 years, and if Beverly survives until August, we'll have been married 12 years, and both of us are alcoholics, and in their case, both of them are alcoholics, and you might wonder how this happens. Well, I'd like to tell you how it happens.
When I first married Beverly, I had heard her say to many people that she was suicidal. And I had said to many people that I was homicidal. And I'm sitting in a chair one day, and I'm reading the Holy Bible, and when you're reading the Holy Bible and a thought comes to you, you know where that thought came from. And I knew it was absolutely important that I help her with her program, because if the damn fool killed herself, they was going to hang me, and I knew it.
So for two weeks, with all the earnestness at my command, I was willing to help her with her program, to prevent that poor unfortunate woman from killing herself and thereby being the victim of her mistake. And in two weeks, I succeeded. Two weeks later, I was reading the same Bible one day, and I heard the sound of breaking glass, and I walked in the kitchen to see what the trouble was, and she was standing up at the kitchen cabinet throwing every glass she had down the hall and breaking them all.
And I had succeeded. I had turned her from a suicidal maniac into a homicidal maniac.
[00:20:01]
I went back and sat down in that chair, and I didn't put the Bible down. It wasn't because I was spiritual. It was because it was the biggest book in the house, and if she came at me, I intended to hit her with it. But I learned something from this. You can make love to them, or you can help them, but don't try to do both. It just won't work. And from that day to this, I have not tried to help her with her Mickey Mouse program.
What I have done instead is tell his story often enough so if the broad knocks herself off, I won't be hung for having done it. Now, there is one word. What the hell are you laughing at? Do you plan on killing somebody? There is one word, probably that you will hear more in Alcoholics Anonymous than any other word ever used anywhere in the English language, and that word is a simple word called love.
And perhaps like most of us and like myself, for a great many years I did not comprehend what the word love really was, what it meant. The first time I ever really remember hearing it used in AA was some 20 years ago and over now, but there was a woman at North Hollywood Clubhouse, and on Thursday night they had a hell of a speaker meeting there, and when she got all finished with her pitch, she says, I love you all. She held her arms up just like Amy did, and after the meeting was over I went up and made a few suggestions and I found out that was not exactly what she had in mind.
And I had heard it said many times as you probably have, we love you, and then the next voice they would say, now don't get emotionally involved with newcomer, and you might wonder what they are talking about. I would like to tell you what I think love is, and first of all I would like to start off by telling you what I think it is not. In the first place, I do not believe that love is an emotion. What I do believe is that love is an action.
And I do believe that for every action we take, a certain set of emotions come into play. And if you have ever noticed your emotions, what you have noticed from them is that they either reward or punish. And if you have emotions of happiness, joy, tenderness, all these things you are rewarded because what you are doing is right and you should be doing it. And if it is anxiety and torment and shame and regret, you are being punished because what you are doing is not what you should be doing.
And there are two kinds, basically, two kinds of love. One of them is love on this materialistic plane we live on called lust, desire, whatever else you may want to call it. And then there is another kind of love called spiritual love. If that comes first, and the A.A. book tells us that in the chapter of the family afterwards where it says the material is okay and it is alright to drive a good car and live in a good home and have a lot of money.
As long as the material always follows the spiritual and never precedes it, it might be a good idea to learn about spiritual love first. And I have found that spiritual love has at least three qualities, this action that we take on other people's behalf. And the first quality of that was transparency, to become transparent, to let other people see in so you can see out, to become visible. And this is one of the things that we are told time after time after time, tell all of your story to someone holding back nothing.
The fifth step in Alcoholics Anonymous is transparency, to become absolutely transparent. You have nothing to hide from and nothing to hide now if you are honest. The second quality of love was apartness. I learned that from LeBron and I don't even like the Prophet but that is where I learned it. Let there be an apartness in our togetherness so each of us can grow spiritually, becoming what God meant for us to be, individually.
You can't grow in my shadow and I certainly can't grow in yours. And how many times have we destroyed our children or have our parents destroyed us because they would not allow us to be what God wanted us to be or we would not allow them to be what they wanted to be. You are my kid and you are not going to be a ditch digger, you are going to be a doctor, God damn it if it kills the both of us. Did you ever go up in the redwoods and you would see those great big beautiful trees up there that grow all the way to the sky?
They are absolutely beautiful and absolutely nothing grows underneath them because the sunlight of the Spirit just can't come through. And how many times have our babies left us because we tried to make them over in our image instead of helping them to be what God wanted them to be. So apartness has to be a quality of love also. The third quality of love was a quality I never associated with love, never in all my life did I associate with love because I didn't really know what that quality itself was.
That is freedom.
[00:25:01]
Never did I associate freedom with love. I mean baby if I made love to you, I owned you. So freedom was something I had a lot of difficulty with. Freedom is not getting what you want or doing what you want when you want to do it. That kind of freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. Freedom is the power to do what you have to do. And probably for the first time in my life when I began to associate those three freedoms or those freedoms and those three qualities with me was the first time I was free from the bondage of self, the only bondage I have ever been under.
Even though it came out as alcoholism, the bondage was to me. Freedom, the power to do what you have to do when you have to do it. Now those qualities in spiritual love are carried right over into this thing called romantic love. And they are carried over into family love and AA love and no matter where you put it, as long as you take that action with those qualities you have absolutely nothing to fear because absolutely nothing can happen to you or the people you love.
And you don't own them and they don't own you. And did you ever hear that song Gentle on My Mind that says just knowing that the path is always open or the door is always open and my path is free to walk tends to make me leave my sleeping bag rolled up and stashed behind your couch? And isn't that what AA is all about? Isn't it the freedom to know that you can walk out here tonight and go across the street to that liquor store?
Isn't that the freedom that keeps you coming back here tomorrow because you want to be here? Of course it is. And the greatest kind of love I have ever experienced from anyone in any way was when someone was there because they wanted to be there, not because they were a prisoner of mine. If you're an Alcoholics Anonymous and you think that you're no good, that you're some kind of a bum, I'd like to point out a couple of things to you you may never have seen.
The first time that I really remember reading about alcoholism is in the book of Genesis in the Bible. And I have no doubt that if prostitution is the world's oldest profession there was an amateur winemaker that got her that way to start with. But do you know it says in the book of Genesis that when Noah's boat hit the beach he became a husband man and planted a vineyard and drank of the grape thereof and was drunk and was naked within his tent.
And he even had one of his kids put away because he seen him in that condition. Haven't we done that same thing? You know as recently as four or five hundred years ago there was another man who was an alcoholic, although he never admitted to it and you'll find no records that say he was. But do you know when Columbus left Spain he did not know where he was going. When he got there he did not know where he was.
When he got back he did not know where he had been. A woman financed the whole trip and she was married to another guy. Now if that isn't a story of an alcoholic I'll put it in with you right now. If you're worried about becoming an old timer I'll tell you something is very simple. Don't drink and don't die and you will. There's nothing complicated about it. And for any one of you who are not convinced I'll tell you one thing.
The years are easy. It's the god damn days that are hard. Thank you all very much. How many people here have less than 30 days sobriety? Anybody still here with 30 days or less? How about less than a year? How about between one and five years? Five and ten? Ten and twenty? Twenty and thirty? Anybody here over 30? They can stay up this late. J.C. Not J.C., but J. C..
[00:30:24]
I'm Jay and I am an alcoholic. And Tinker was right. I am J.C. I just don't walk on water. I've been listening an awful lot lately to a lot of people. And I don't know, I guess that's where it comes from for me. I spent two years in Alcoholics Anonymous and the only thing I did right was I went to a big book study. And I was just talking to Dixie about that. Because she was there when I was there. And I used to go to this house and they used to ask me what I wanted. And I wanted to fix this marriage. And the next time this gentleman asked me that question, I wanted to get out of that marriage. And the next time he asked me that, I wanted to fix the kids. And obviously Alcoholics Anonymous didn't work for me. And I reached that point when they tell you in the book where you either you drink or you die. And I chose death. And it was at that time that I learned about surrender. I learned that I had to quit playing God as the book told me. Because I don't have that power of life and death. And I came back to this program and I raised my hand as a newcomer. And the things that I had learned in that big book study I had to put into my life. And I did. You see when I came back to Alcoholics Anonymous and when that gentleman, you spoke here tonight, asked me what I wanted, I just wanted to be sober. And I wanted to live some kind of a life. And I made a commitment to Alcoholics Anonymous. And that has carried me for to this date. This month I'll have five years.
Thank God. And that is a miracle. I was wandering around and I had, I made a geographic this time, sober. I went to Maine. I'm a native Californian. I went to Maine to make it better. And listen, Timbuktu would have been, you know, just the same. I mean, it didn't matter because I was running. And I had to come back because, you see, you can't run away. I found out that, and they told me this. This is what pissed me off, is they told me this and I didn't believe it. They told me, Jay, when you leave or whatever you do, you still pack yourself in that suitcase. And they were right. And I came back and I made a commitment again. Not to Alcoholics Anonymous, but to follow some direction. And I did. And I called a sponsor every day. And I stayed close. But I was still dying. I was very, very serious.
You see, I had a head full of AA and I had the big book and I didn't have any action. And I didn't know how to do it. And I went to a meeting called the Gong Show and Tinker did the same thing as he did tonight. And I took some girls from the Odyssey House, which is a recovery house. And this group of people had love and laughter in them. And they greeted everybody at the door. And they made me feel a part of the thing that I missed.
And I didn't know how to do it. I was too embarrassed to ask, how do you become a part of? And they didn't wait for me to ask. They took me by the hand and they dragged me all around town, out of town. And I still haven't, I don't know, I have a suitcase that's packed all the time. I'm ready. And that's the way it is with these people. These people that showed me how to do it. The only resentment I had is they thought I was one of the girls from the house. And I had to explain that I was sober a certain length of time. And to tell you the truth, I was. I was just one of those girls. I was new. I was willing.
[00:35:01]
I wasn't going to come to this roundup. I won this roundup. And through certain events in my life, I just didn't want to face you people. I got scared and I didn't want to come. I wanted to stay home and safe in my little room. And I gave it away. And yesterday it was given back to me. She didn't want it. And I said, what the hell, let's go on down. And you know, it's been really great. You know, all those apprehensions and all those feelings that I had aren't there anymore. Because there's a lot of people right here in this room that I know and I love. I betty. And I'm glad I'm here. I don't ever want to be a part of, ever. And I never want to lose that sense of commitment. And I, and I found out that that sense of commitment goes with anything that I do, whether it be a relationship.
And that's been very heavy for me. Bev talked about relationships, lusts and you know, whatever we want to call them. But I found out that, you know, there's a commitment to a relationship, to friends, to lovers, to whatever. And I don't have to settle for anything less. You gave me that. I am not lesser than. And that I'm very grateful. For a girl that had no reason to live. No way of living. Alcoholics Anonymous has given me a reason to live, has given me purpose, and has given me 12 steps. And I won't settle for less. Thanks, Tinker.
It's that time. Frank and I together would like to thank all of the people who participated and shared here tonight. Would you like to give them a little hand? I think it's a fantastic meeting. Enjoy, enjoy your holiday at the spa. Don't get too sunburned. And I hope you go home Sunday having made some new friends. If you're here with a group of people that you know, walk outside that group every once in a while and get acquainted with someone you haven't met yet. This has been such, I recommend it. I know a lot of people in a lot of places. And I was, I always felt so lonely. And I always felt so on the outside looking in.
And when I finally got myself to where I could think in Alcoholics Anonymous, I made up my mind that I wasn't going to stay all the time with those people that I knew that I was real comfortable with. I was going to keep walking out of that circle until it got bigger and bigger. And I hope you all do that this weekend. There's some people here that I see standing around out in the coffee room and all, they look kind of lost. Let's make them feel like they're in the family. We're going to close the meeting now and Cheryl R. from Bellflower. Hi, my name is Cheryl and I'm an alcoholic. I'm also proud to be a member of the big book group of Bellflower. Yay! And I'm real glad to be here. I have a few announcements. Set your alarms to be sure to make the family meeting at 10 this morning. You will hear from Al-Anon, Alateen, and AA. An excellent treat awaits you.
Please remember to wear your badges at all times. A special announcement, an extra special treat has been added to the roundup program this year. There will be an AA participation meeting in the Mediterranean room at 7 to 9 on Saturday evening for all persons not attending the banquet. The hospitality room in the Mediterranean room will be discontinued from 6 to 9 but will reopen for the close of the meeting. After the banquet and show, everyone is welcome to come to the convention center and dance. And I would like to ask Joe H. to lead us in the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
[00:40:12]
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. Keep coming back at work. Thank you. Enjoyed meeting you. Sure did. Charlie T. Okay.