Thank you. Can you all hear me? I, I need no help, but I’m wrong. I thought about it. And loud. I hate loud. I hate, hate loud music, you know. I’m an alcoholic, a member of the Great Gas Area group of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Davy, mm, Thompson. And through the grace of, mm, God, which I found here in Alcoholics Anonymous, I haven’t seen fit to have a drink of alcohol since the tenth day of January, 1955. And I say to you, my friends, that is including God. So if somebody will come here and laugh at you. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, uh, first in 1948. But I had to take a few more to crack down. Now, I’m a little sick and tired of, um, second choice. I was absolutely not sure what to, to note. Damn if I was, it wasn’t second choice again. But I’m kind of happy that the water just didn’t show up, because I am a Protestant, and I’m glad I’m here. I’ll bet you, you heard our Simon, uh, this was Friday night, and she said she was an Irish-Roman Catholic.

You heard, and I heard another, uh, lady this morning who said she was an Irish-Roman Catholic. You know, it gets to get a little, uh, heavy sometimes, you know? Well, I’m from Ireland, too, and I’m a Protestant, you see. So there’s some of us here in Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, time is important. I see by the program that you’re gonna have a, mm, a, a dance here at nine o’clock. This I gotta see. Well, you’re not gonna have a dance tonight at nine o’clock. At least not here anyway. Now, I forgot to tell you, you, uh, I suppose some of you are, are sitting there saying to yourselves or scratching your heads saying, “He don’t talk, mm, properly.” You’re right, I don’t talk properly. I’m not just an alcoholic, I’m a stuttering alcoholic. So this could be the longest speech you, you was ever at. So you have gotta pay close attention. I’ve got a habit of, if I’m trying to say something, my eyes are shut, and my mouth wide open. There’s nothing coming out. Be patient, be patient.

I have a hard job saying anything that starts with the, uh, letters, mm, to, to Z. And you can’t carry on much of a conversation by saying A all night. You know, I can’t even say my own first name unless I get a running start at it. And then if you ever say, “I beg your pardon?” Well, that happened to me in Alcoholics Anonymous just once. So I tried to save again. I didn’t have much luck. So from now on, if you don’t hear me the first time around, the second time around, my name is Arthur. Because I will say it. I got some notes here. Okay, you better. And I got some more in here. Well, I don’t know if we have a mo– In the good, uh, uh, part, we have a Serenity Prayer. I, uh, took a moment to turn and ask, uh, God as I understand Him to help me say the things that I might, that He’d want me to say. So if you don’t like what I say here, take the trouble to Jesus, not me. It’s important to keep an open mind. I call them as I see them. I got no college education.