Al-Anon Day of Courage, Al-Anon Steps & Sponorship Workshop in Beaumont Texas

You don't know it that you learn the difference. I believe this includes things we did not do. Shortcomings. Times we came short. I used to talk to my students, of course, about the responsibility of using words correctly.

And they're 17 years old and I would say, what does that mean? Well first, it means you know the meaning and you use the right word. Yeah. That's the beginning, But if I said to them, are you ever responsible for what you didn't say? Well, their theory is you can't be responsible for something you didn't do.

And if you ask the right questions, they begin to realize that they are indeed responsible for the apology not made and the sympathy withheld and the affirmation not given. I think if I believed in the literal hell I would believe there's a special place there for the with holders of the world. The people who could have given emotionally and verbally and don't do it. I had, things that I had failed to do and I was reminded constantly on this step that I wasn't just responsible for what I had done, but for what I had not done. I think humility is a sense of proportion.

It's a recognition of my creature hood, of knowing which one of us is the higher power. And in areas where I used to take pride, I learned to be grateful instead. I learned that from my friends in AA. I never heard one of them take credit for sobriety. I always heard them being grateful for it.

And I got to thinking about that and I realized I had paid my way through an expensive private university and I had married the man I wanted and had the children I wanted when I wanted them, and I had a career at which I was very good and that I loved. And suddenly these became gifts for which I should be grateful and not accomplishments for which I should be proud. And now when someone says something, oh, something nice about my children, I hear myself saying thank you. I'm very grateful for her or him. I just give you that for what it's worth.

It made a tremendous difference in my life. The difference between gratitude and pride. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Agent 9 were the milestones for me the way 45 are for a great many people. These are the ones that I could look back on and think life was never the same after this.

A good inventory inevitably turns up people we have harmed, and my sponsor is probably yours, did suggest that I start with God and myself and then other people, and I didn't see for a long time how I could have harmed God, but if as the in all the scriptures the analogy is used of parent and child. I know the thing that hurts any parent most is to be shut out of a child's life, And I had certainly shut God out of mine. And so I put his name first. Her name? His name?

Whatever. And then I, it worked for me to have 3 columns on the paper. The name of the person, what I had done, and what forms the amend should take. Because sometimes saying you're sorry is all it takes, but like with my children I'll be making amends the rest of my life. I will be leading an amended life.

And this is what I have people do with whom I work too. I will tell you that as I became willing to make the amends, God provided the opportunity. Sometimes a little before I was willing, but it's I know that now that making the amends is my responsibility and the reaction of other people is not my responsibility. It's a good thing because they didn't usually say oh, that's alright. I didn't behave very well either.

They usually said well, you ought to be sorry. So I was glad I had learned I wasn't responsible for their reaction. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others. One of the graces in my life is that it is not hard for me to say I was wrong and it's not hard for me to say I'm sorry. I truly don't want to hurt you.

And if I do I'm really miserable until I can make it right. If I hurt you, it's through, insensitivity or thoughtlessness. It isn't through malice. I believe that's true of most people, don't you? They don't lie awake nights thinking, now how can I make Blanche miserable?

They don't do that. They just don't think. And it's, it's not hard for me to it's a good thing it's not hard for me to say I'm wrong. I used to tell my students if you enjoy seeing a teacher make a mistake, you're going to have a wonderful time in this class, and because I make them regularly, still do. I know that different wrongs require different amends.

I'm going to take time to tell you the pie crust story because it has meant something in my life. I grew up in Florida, no air conditioning, learning to cook as a little girl rolling out pie crust, and it would be like chewing gum. And I had, as I said, a bad temper and I would throw the rolling pin down and My mother would say, honey, roll it out again. Be thankful if you can do it over. She said, there will be many, many times in your life when you wish you could do it over and you won't have the chance.

Always be thankful if you can do it over. Well, we can't always do it over, but the step, the 9th step helps us to make it as right as we can. It's as close as we can come to rolling out the pie crust again. I said this was the milestone for me. It made the difference.

The amends have to be direct. We can't say, oh, well tell him I'm sorry. You know, it has to be and I think it's better if it's eyeball to eyeball, but sometimes we can't do it that way. I have worked with people who needed to make amends to people who had died and I have gone with them to cemeteries. I have helped them write letters.

This is true of students when I was counseling too, not just Valemons. And that that seems to give them a great deal of relief. And one of the little catches on this one is that I'm responsible for my reaction to you. And one of the times I really do hate to say I was wrong is when I have to make amends for a bad reaction. I mean, anybody would have reacted that way, and you shouldn't have done that in the 1st place.

I wouldn't have reacted that way, but I know today that I'm responsible for how I reacted no matter what you did to me. I have to say to you, I had a bad reaction and I'm sorry. I have to wait sometimes until I feel it. And the timing and the wording are so important. If we had a lot of time, we'd go into that.

Continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly. Admitted it. It says when we were wrong, not if, because we will be. The 1st year I I taught school, I taught the 1st 3 years I taught 6th grade. After that it was always high school, but this was in the 6th grade and the principal of the school suggested that at the end of the day we evaluate the day.

So I would say to the kids, what did we do today that you liked? If anything. What did we do that you'd rather we not have done? Sometimes I could change that, sometimes not. So I was accustomed to this.

When I got to high school, I had them do it at the end of every semester. If you've had college courses, you know that you evaluate at the end of every course. And, I knew the I knew the advantage of this. And until we got more literature none of us knew how often we had to do this, but our literature says repeatedly that we do it every day. It doesn't say we have to write it down every day but I'm a journal keeper so I often do write it down.

But I think at least a mental inventory and not where was that wicked and evil and awful, but what didn't work out so well? You know, maybe I won't want to do that again. I hope you can hear the difference in that. I'm really not into self hatred and I find so many people don't know their own worth and value. It was, it was hard for me to learn the other part of this and it's not written down, but I believe it and that's to say what went right.

What did I do? Charlie Brown says every now and then we do the right thing. I have a friend who literally gives himself gold stars, has a little chart, so he can remember that he does some things right. I think I hope you'll give yourself a gold star for the things you did right. We had 2 fallacies at our house on admitting we were wrong or making apologies.

Charles couldn't ever say he was wrong or that he was sorry, so I assumed he never felt it. I'm so verbal verbally oriented that unless you put it in words I don't know, that you're feeling it or thinking it. He, on the other hand, thought that if you could say it as easily as I did, you couldn't possibly mean it. Lots of interesting discussions about those two things. Whole books have been written on prayer meditation.

I can just tell you a few things. Sought through prayer meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. Here again, the thought, I think, implies that we have to dig. We have to do some searching, but we're given tools for finding God's will for our lives and those are the tools of prayer and meditation. This step became real for me 4 years after I got into Al Anon.

I mentioned my husband's sponsor for whom I learned so much. She was at our house and I was explaining to her how busy I was. I was just frantic. I stay over committed and too busy and I know why I do it but I do it. I guess I haven't been ready for God to remove that defect.

She said, I think maybe you would, find it helpful to spend more time in prayer and meditation. And I said, you weren't listening. You didn't hear me say I don't have time now for what I do. And she said 2 things that I've never forgotten. The first thing she said was, I wish you want wanted the giver as much as you want the gifts.

And then she said, 5 minutes a day may be enough for contact, but it's not enough for growth. And she went on to say that with adequate prayer and meditation all the non essentials in your life fall away and they do. That has never failed, but I can remember. Okay. I need a little longer on my 11th step time which as I told you I don't do first thing in the morning.

I do it in the late afternoon. This comes from years of coming in from school and getting a snack or something to drink and mentally shifting gears, you know? And that's still when I do it best. Between 4 and 5 o'clock is when I find works for me. And when my life is most busy, I try to spend more time at it.

I use some devotional books, a lot of them as well as the Al Anon ones. I write things down. That's I don't know what I think till I write it down. I don't know what I feel till I write it down. I know that doesn't work for everyone.

I know there are people for whom that is not helpful. Don't do it if it doesn't work for you, but it does for me. I have a prayer notebook and I had learned the components of prayer when I was a little girl and I used them. You can use anything you like, but mine start out with praise and thanksgiving And I have a list of things for which I thank God on a daily basis. Followed by confession and forgiveness, asking for forgiveness and stating my forgiveness to anyone that I need to forgive.

Forgiveness is hard for me. I said a while ago, ask about the payoff is. As long as I don't forgive you, I can feel superior to you. As long as I don't forgive you, you can't hurt me again. But once I forgive you, I'm vulnerable all over again, you know.

Those are the payoffs for me. And Charles used to say that if there was a category in the Guinness Book of Records for Who Stayed Mad the Longest, I would win it. I hope that's no longer true but it was when he said it. So I ask for forgiveness and I give it. Then the the third one is petition.

Now we used to have lively discussions in my Al Anon group in Odessa whether you can pray for specifics. This step says you pray only for knowledge of his will. Well I've decided, this is what I've decided for me. If I can say, give us this day our daily bread, that's pretty specific, then I can pray for specific needs as long as I can say and mean it. If this conflicts with your will I want your will even more.

I used to have to pray to mean that. But today I mean that. I want his will even more. I really do. And so it works for me.

I can do that. I can pray for specifics. And I do pray for people, but I don't, I don't tell God this the 4th component is intercession. I do pray for people, but I don't tell God what to do about you. I don't even ask him to make you well if you're ill.

I don't know. What I do is ask that you find and do the will of God. This is all I know how to pray for with you and about you. I wish we had another hour we could all share on how we know God's will. How do you know what His will is?

How can you follow it if you don't know what it is and how do you find out what it is? We'll talk about that a little bit in a minute. I believe that God knows our limitations. In the 23rd Psalm. My students had that in one of their books as a poem, not a scripture, you know, just as a poem and so explaining it to them I did some research as I did on everything I taught them and well for instance in it it says that, he leadeth me beside the still waters and my research said that sheep cannot swim.

Their fleece gets wet and drags them under. And that the shepherd knows this and he doesn't ridicule them or criticize them or scold them. He allows for their limitations and if there isn't a still area in the stream he makes one. He dams it up with rocks so that they won't be so afraid because running water scares them. That just gave me a lot of relief, so I'll give it to you.

I believe he knows my limitations and in asking for his will for me, four things work for me. I believe I have to have the desire to do it. I don't mean that I'd like to. Now now try to hear this. There's a difference in wanting to and liking to.

We've been married and in recovery for a while and Charles decided he would like to take flying lessons and he did and we bought a little plane, a Cessna 185. I didn't like flying with him, but I wanted to. Can you hear that? Later on when I was writing this master's thesis, they would write nasty things in the margin, my committee would. They would write too literary, too emotional.

I finally said to my advisor, you're lucky it's not in poetry form. I don't know how to write scientific documents. I did not like writing it, but I wanted to. When we studied Emerson, who believed this very strongly, I would say to my students now, it was his belief that God guides us by giving us the desire to do it. Well, they love that.

Alright. If I wanna punch his lights out, that's God's will. I said, well now, let's talk about this. There are things I would like to do, but I really don't want to. I have to look at that pretty hard sometimes and decide if I really, really wanted or if it's just something I would like.

It's, a well we could talk a long time about knowing his will. I said he gives you the desire, I think he gives you the ability. I don't have to ask Him whether it's His will, but I try out for the Olympic swim team or the Metropolitan Opera. I believe if it's his will, I'll have the ability and I'll know. And I'll have the time.

Now this is important because when I when I get rushed, I've I've taken on some things that were not, His will for me. And, I'll have the energy and that's a big one with me because I don't have unlimited energy And if I get too tired, I've been doing something that wasn't his will. Those aren't in Al Anon anywhere. That's what works for me, So I'll share it with you. And finally, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry the message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

The spiritual awakening is promised only as the result of these steps. We aren't promised it before then. We used to have good meetings in Odessa. I haven't had any in Austin or in the Austin area. On what was your spiritual awakening?

How did you know it had happened? You might try that at one of your meetings. Most of us don't have visions, you know, or see blinding lights or hear voices, but we have spiritual awakenings. My own came in the form of awareness, and that's not an unmix blessing. I have a friend in California, Tom Weston, who says, In recovery you feel better.

You feel everything better. Grief and sorrow and anger. Yes. This is in 3 parts and the second part says we carry the message. You know by now there are a lot of ways to carry it.

You are carrying a message to me this morning by being in that chair. You're saying to me recovery is important to me. And if you've been around a long time, you are saying to me recovery is still important to me. I hope that if I ever get so well I don't have to go to meetings to learn something. I'm not there yet, but if I ever do, I hope I will go to give because I've had a lot of experience.

And I would be so sorry if everyone quit after 4 5 years. We have that problem in the Austin area. Do you? You do. Okay.

And then it says we practice these principles in all our affairs. This presupposes that we will have a life outside of Al Anon. Our blueprint for progress which I helped write when I was on the literature committee, says the same thing. That you be a valuable member of your community and you contribute to it. That's what recovery means.

I believe the AA big book says to be of service to ourselves and to others, doesn't it? I'm not sure about that. But recovery means you are a contributing citizen of wherever you live. And this says in all our affairs, not just when we're at a meeting. I do, so speaking sometimes to other than Al Anon AA audiences I in a couple of weeks I'll talk to the Temple Hospice volunteers on what Al Anon is.

And I've done that to nursing classes and to the rotary club and to, you know, just to let them be aware of it as a resource. And that pleases me but I also do a great deal of speaking on communication in the workplace. I was telling Bidge on the way here when they do a flyer, then they put my full name and my degrees. And I looked my first reaction, and then I realized that that's that's okay. That's what they're doing.

They videotape it, which we don't allow, of course, if we're doing a program talk. I believe that as my Baptist grandmother used to say, we are saved to serve and that there's something that we need to do to give this program away. I think we can't keep it unless we do. We're running just a little late. I had planned for you to break into groups.

I didn't know there would be so many of you. So now talk to me about this. What we can do instead of having you in groups and have the group discuss a question and then have the group report what you all decided, we can do that, or I can just ask Tish and Pat and Christine to hand these out to those of you. I had arranged for 12 groups. What do you think is best?

I just didn't know there'd be so many. I was thinking about 50 of you. Speak to me. What is your privilege your preference here? Oh, you can stay at the table.

See, you're wonderful, Pat. Oh, dear. Okay. Great. I gave her all of them.

They're just 12. Sorry. Read your question and tell us what your group decided. I want it to be on the tape, so please come up here to this mic. It's no fun listening to it if, you just hear me.

Well, thank you. I've managed to walk over everything I've got so far. Thank you. Well, 5, and we won't have long pauses between the would you take about 3 minutes no more and tell us what your consensus of opinion was? Who had question number 1?

I told you to choose someone at your table. Okay. Who has 2? Alright. And 3?

Would you all Good. Would you all come up here and read your question and tell us what you decided? My name's Doyle, and I'm a grateful recovering alcoholic, but I was elected as a spokesperson for our table. And, someone asked me what I was doing here and I said I'm infiltrating. Do you surrender easily?

Share with us some of the problems you have with surrender. And I if I had to give you a consensus for our table, I would say that, we do have trouble, all of us, surrendering. And the, the problems are in getting self out of the way. I personally think that, as I work my program, as you know our programs are really the same program, 12 steps, that, if I can make what we call a little bit of spiritual progress each day and just get a little bit closer to my higher power whom I call god, then I can surrender more easily because to me that's what surrender is all about is seeking to do God's will in my life and, trying to keep my own personal will out of the way of God doing that for me. I'm a newcomer and they made me do this.

That's the last time I'll go to the bathroom. Our first question was were you apprehensive about doing step 4? And we had several different reasons. One of them I had to scratch out, they told me not to say. Too busy, not disciplined, not being able to do it perfectly, not a priority, had a horrible secret, one that was worse than anyone else's.

Felt our safe sponsor would abandon us if he or she knew how horrible we had been. And the second part was, why did you go ahead and do it? One of our answers was we had a sponsor that we loved and respected and wanted to do it because we knew that he or she wanted what was best for us. 1 of us said we were tired of being stuck in pain and not making any progress. We were tired of going around step 4 and that wasn't working.

Those that had done a 4 step had seemed to be recovering and we wanted what they had. Hi, everybody. My name is John. I'm a very happy l nine. Ours was, l nine members are given several suggested methods of doing step 5.

Which methods were used by the people in this group? Did any method seem to work better than the others? And one of them was, mine was a very verbal one. Mine is a very, mine is in a journal from form, then in discussion with sponsor, life story form, 1 on 1 with sponsor, write and discuss with sponsor, life story and discussion, reading, writing, shared what I'd written in the 4 step with sponsor. And I think about our general consensus was basically what blank said.

I don't know about you, but I had a whole lot of problems before alcohol ever entered my life. I needed to talk to we thought we kinda needed to talk to somebody that we would feel comfortable talking to about someone's drinking or someone's thinking. Or, and I don't apologize for the things I say because I mean from the heart. I needed to talk to somebody that, that wouldn't say, well, isn't that something? If I said I can't pee at 3 o'clock in the morning, I needed somebody to be able to talk that with me that I felt comfortable with.

In all aspects of my life, I heard someone in a in a group in Beaumont say I had the isms when I got here, I, self, and me. And I had all those and the people that we talked about in this said that they had those long before alcoholism ever entered their life. Thank you. Hi. I'm Margie, a very grateful alum.

I am Margie. Thank you. Ours was, in 3 parts. Did all of you take step 5 with your sponsors? And we were just about evenly divided.

Some of us did. Some of us did us in weird weird ways. I was one of the weird way ones. Mine was rooted in fear. My first one, I went 35 miles away from my home, never told anybody what I was coming for, and did it in a confessional and walked out.

And then others did it, you know, in a really responsible way. They planned it and and, and needless to say, as, time went on, I had a sponsor that helped me to do it in the proper way. Then this, there were some of us that did them with, therapists. There were some that found they had to go to several therapists before they were able to do a 5th step and I guess the ones of us, including myself, found that if we found a therapist who had a 12 step program of their own, that we were able to be very comfortable with that particular therapist. The second part was, what was the benefit of this?

And I think we all realized that, as Blanche said, and from the beginning of time, that we've always had philosophers and many other people tell us that to share what we consider our sins is the path to feeling whole and recovered and well. How do all of you feel about taking it with someone else? We didn't feel that was you know, most of us, after we've done it with a therapist, was more than willing to tell everybody or or quite a few people, let's put it that way. So the consensus was that, it certainly does help to heal and is a great, great help to wholeness and recovery. And possibly, there will never be any recovery without it.

Thank you. That was 5 hours. I know. Oh. Someone just Okay.

Who's handed out the question? Hi. I'm Terry. Hi, Terry. Hi, Terry.

Our question was why why do you all think that some defects are difficult for us to ask God to remove and would you be willing to name some of them? We identified 6 that we thought were willing to tell you anyway that were difficult to be removed, because we like them. The first one, is complacency. And the reason to pay off of that is that there is comfort in ruts and a fear of change. We also identified procrastination because we like our leisure time to do what we want, and some of us have the illusion, justified or not, that we work better under pressure anyway.

Some more defects were sarcasm and control because they're good defense mechanisms, Enabling because of the fear of the unknown. What will happen if I if I stop enabling? Will he or she or they still love me? Regarding enabling and controlling, it also gives a false sense of self importance. And another defect that's hard to let go of is anger because it gives us the luxury of having someone else to blame, And therefore, there can be a feeling of superiority.

Thank you. If you have 7, 8, 9, would you come up and sort of hang out? Hi. I'm Kitty. Hi, Kitty.

Our question was, what are some workable and understandable definitions of humility? And then the second part is when you feel humble, is it a pleasant feeling? Our group came up with definitions: Giving up self will to God's will. Humility makes us all equal. Humility is not judging people, places, or things.

It's being open to other ways of doing things. To be able to look within yourself without shame or embarrassment, and to be able to share those discoveries with others. It's being willing to change. And the second part, when you feel humble, is it a pleasant feeling? It's not always a pleasant feeling, but after doing often enough, we will come to know that it is once your way up to serenity and that it is the basics of the 12 steps.

Thank you. Hi, I'm Connie. I'm grateful Recolor being out of line, and mine was number 8. I said would you share with each other and then with all of us the most difficult amends you had to make? Why was this so hard?

Well, we talked it over to our table and I guess mine was the worst. Or I just looked easy once. So, the means that I had to make to my sister was the hardest. My mother remarried when I was 9, and, she got pregnant. She had more kids.

And, as soon as the twins were born, it was like my childhood ended and I resented them all their lives. But if you ask them how I felt about them, they would say, oh, you know, that's her sister. She really loves us because I was their room mother. And there was just this whole big lie behind everything, and I was always doing things for them and everything. But I really hated them because when my brother and sister were little, very little, we had chickens and I would take their shoes off and put them in the backyard so they could step in the dew, and and the duck and we had a duck we had a duck that would bite you and he would just eat them up.

And I just I just loved that. But that was the hardest amends I ever had to make was to go to her and tell her how I had really felt about her all the time because I literally hated her, both of them, and especially my sister. But anyway, I made my amends to her and I was real reluctant to do that, but when God gets ready for you to do something, you're gonna do it. Because he made me so miserable, I had to go make that that a man And so that was my man's Our question was, is it hard for you all to admit you were wrong? And then second, what about saying that you're sorry?

Well in the first part about admitting that we're wrong, most of us decided that we had a lot of denial that you had to work through to even come to realize that you were at fault or that, there was something that you were you're going to have to apologize for. The getting in touch with that responsibility that it was you, what we other came to find out was how or who pointed it out. If I came to find out that I was wrong, then it made it easier to make an apology. But constructive criticism pointing out that I was wrong, it was much harder to deal with. The last part of that part was the feeling of relief or serenity or this freedom that you felt after you finally just realized you were wrong.

That was, that was the best part about that. Then getting back to what about saying that you're sorry? A lot of us said that the fear of saying that we were sorry, that you became vulnerable. We a lot of us thought that at work and in personal situations, that it was a great deal easier to say that you were sorry because there was maybe not a history, not anything in it But if you had to go and tell the mom you don't like, that you're sorry, then you're opening yourself up to either some more constructive criticism or just something that was real fearful. One lady pointed out that, sometimes just saying when she was sorry, when she really wasn't sure that she was or didn't really feel it, but that she said it, practiced it, and that it became easier and that she could mean it pretty shortly after that.

Thank you. Of course, I volunteered to come up here and do this. I'm Wayne. I'm a very grateful Al Anon and definitely am enjoying our day. Sitting back here with that group of people from Venus, and I'm from Mars, I will I will assure you we read this question different, but I will try to relay what they said.

And my question is, do you pray for specifics? The answers that we came up with, I pray for people, for God and his will in their life, that God's will be carried out. That I'll do God's will today. I pray for specifics if according to your will. I pray for specific specifics if it be God's will to heal, to approach God in my understanding that God's will prevail.

I pray I pray for real general specifics that people have health, that God take care of them, that I have accepted that God is taking care of them. I have relied that God is looking over them. One of the things that we came up with on the answer part of explain why you do or do not and that's pray for specifics. And as we when we pray for specifics, we're exercising control, but when we rely on God, we're not praying for the specifics then. Thank you.

Hi, everybody. I'm Sandy. Hi, Sandy. Our question was, how do you know the will of God? And that's something I'm struggling with right now in my own personal dealings, and I thought, what an appropriate question.

But we had, 8 different answers, and well, we had no consensus. But, one of the one of the first one was, when you ask god what is the most loving and caring thing to do, then you feel like you are are doing God's will. Someone else said that by their feelings that they're feeling peaceful about it. They feel like it's God's will. Someone said sometimes you just know it.

Another one was staying in obedience to, our higher power. If you're following what he says, then you feel like it's his will. Someone said by reflecting where I am and what I have asked for, guidance. Another one was was by praying for his understanding. And another one was sometimes the desire to do what I want to do leaves me if I ask for a knowledge of his will, and if the desire leaves you, you know it wasn't what he wanted.

And then another one was if I have to keep asking if this is right, it probably is not. Thank you. Hi. My name is Kaye, and I'm a grateful Al Anon. Hi, Kaye.

And our question, was what are some of the ways by which you all carry the message to others? So we didn't really have a consensus. We just wrote down what we we talked about. And so one was attitude, one was sensitivity to others, being able to listen to others, showing up to meetings and events, being here for newcomers, participation in meetings and in in activities, and also in service work. Oh, you got an a.

Thank you. Such a good idea. If we had a whole weekend, we'd do some writing, but we don't. Let I kept thinking of things I forgot to say on each one of them, but one I will mention on the, I am sorry. I have a son and a number of friends who believe that anything you put after the words I am are tremendously vital.

Have you heard that? I I don't okay. And, they will not say I'm sorry because it has another meaning. They say I regret that. They say I wish I had not done that.

I want to apologize to you for doing that. And I think that's fine if you, if you have that in your life. I don't think, you know, you have to say I am. Anything you don't wanna say you are because it does have another meaning. There isn't ever time enough, and the reason we ran late was that I took those 10 minutes to tell you my life.

I kept thinking, why are we late? I've done this dozens of times, and it works just fine. But, anyway, that was why, and I won't have to do that with the sponsorship. So we'll have lunch, and I will work you again a little while later. Thank you.

Thank you. Let me take care of a couple of housekeeping things. Jason is here with lunch for those of you who ordered it. You have 2 choices. If you get in line early, you'll have a choice, turkey or roast beef if you're the last one, I guess you get what's left.

The bathrooms are over there as I said. We'll try to come back here, it'll be a little after one because we're running a little late and I have an amends for all of you since we're working on the steps. I want to tell you that, for those of you who love precision and all that kind of thing, we're I'm sorry that I'm running late to today. And for those of you who know me, I've been nudging especially all the people that were helping me this morning, but that quality of control is what qualifies me for Al Anon. So have a good lunch.

I do have a few announcements that are coming up, for coming events, and I laid all of Well, thank you. My goodness. I am nursing a bad knee and, I do appreciate having a stool. Well, if I can get on it. The knee has to bend for you to get on it.

You know? Thank you. Yes. Now I need to be scooted up because this won't move. This will roll.

Well, it won't because I taped it down. Oh. Okay. I'm gonna scooch up and you push it under me. Okay?

That did it. Thank you. Is that good? Well, I told him if they made me too comfortable, I would never hush. They did it anyway.

The reason we ran late this morning was because I took those 10 minutes to, tell you about who I am and where I'm coming from. I'm going to take about 10 now to answer some of the questions that you came up with during lunch. A great many of you heard me say Permian High School and you thought football. Of course, you did. I have to tell you that, I have been married to the only 2 men on this planet who are not football fans.

And so when I started teaching at Permian, I learned I could not carry on a conversation there if I didn't know more about it than I knew. So I decided, you know, I read I read books about it. That's my way. So I read the books and then I, after I felt I knew the rules pretty well, I said to my students, okay. I'll watch a game.

They said, Sunday afternoon, watch a pro game. Okay. So the next Monday, I said to them, I watched a football game yesterday and I can say several words in football. And they said, Speak some football. I said, Well, they talked a lot about psyching the quarterback.' I said, 'I guess they get him nervous or tense or something because they certainly' and they laughed and they slapped their thighs and they said, that's sacking.

They said, don't say anything else in football. You'll embarrass yourself. I truly heard psyching. We hear what we're predisposed to hear. So this particular class at Christmas gave me a sports dictionary and they underlined sacking in it so I would know.

We read, we were required to read an early American novel. We studied American literature and we read The Scarlet Letter. And I read a great deal of it aloud because it's very difficult reading. And, in case you've forgotten, in case it's been a year or 2 since you were in high school, this is the story of a young woman in the in Boston in the early 1600s whose husband was still in England and she became pregnant and had a little girl. Now I had trouble convincing my students that that was frowned upon.

They kept saying 'what's the point here?' You know? I tried to tell them how people felt about it at that time. Ordinarily, they branded an a for adulteress on the forehead but she was young and beautiful and they took pity on her and made her wear the scarlet letter. And so after we'd read the book of course I would talk about the fact that we still letter people. We just don't sew it on.

And I said, I think we forget there are people behind the letter we put on them. And we've talked about for instance, I said, I understand that, in our high school, there are groups of people. I believe you automatically put a j for jock on people who are athletes. And we talked about the other groups and they agreed, yes. There were socialites.

Now socialites were elected to office and somehow that made them in a in a different, category. There was the f for freaks. They were the ones at that point in time who tended to hang out, with unsavory characters. And, then there was the, k for kicker. These were the ones who wore western shirts and drove pickups, you know, with gun racks in the back.

And if I said to a student, what group are you in? Without exception, the student would say, oh, I'm not I'm not in any group. But there are these groups here. And I would say things like, what would happen if you took, if you took that k off and you saw a person who happened to enjoy western clothes. Well, they all I could do that, you know.