Another good meeting

I had kind of a rough day trying to figure out some health insurance stuff and dealing with life on life's terms. So I headed to a meeting tonight, right after I cooked up a batch of chicken with rigatoni. It was good if I do say so myself.

Anyway, one of the kids at the meeting (this meeting gets all the drug court people) was saying that he though people who had NA stickers on their cars were narcs. When was the last time you used the work "narc"? Anyway, it reminded me of a story, I'm not sure why but lately at that meeting I'm surrounded by all the teenagers and young adults, and I remember a lot of stories from my early recovery.

I was married at the time and we were at the Northern California Regional NA convention in Sacramento, probably in about 1989. Anyhoo, we ate dinner, my wasband and me and about five of my girlfriends, Susan Lydon, who I've blogged about before, and several other women. After we all threw our money in, my wasband stayed inside to pay the bill and we went out on the sidewalk to wait for him to head to the convention center.

Standing outside by about ten brand new pickups were a bunch of Hells Angels in their colors. We gals stood there waiting for my wasband and they sort of sidled over to us and starting making conversation. I was not in the mood to chat because I steer clear of bikers of that ilk, but a few of the gals started chatting with one in particular.

He asked us where we were from and we told him Oakland, the home of Sonny Barger, who of course started the whole mess. He asked what we were doing in Sacramento. There was a weird silence. My friend Marilyn piped up and said, "We're here for a Narcotics Anonymous meeting."

The biker kind of hiked his leather vest around him and said, "Well, I prefer to keep my narcotics anonymous, too."

But that wasn't the funniest part. My wasband about that time came out of the restaurant and saw us standing there surrounded by Hells Angels. He walked by us like he didn't even know us. Later I asked him why and he said, "What do I look, stupid?" He was a survivor, that's for sure.

Anyway, it was getting dark as we all piled in the car and drove to the convention center for the speaker meeting. We drove across the Sacramento River bridge and we saw this one headlight coming toward us. We couldn't figure out what it was until we were right up on it. A street person pushing a grocery cart had rigged up a headlight on his cart. It was too bizarre.

I used to love to go to NA conventions. Last weekend was Arizona Regional Convention which is an awesome convention and which I unfortunately could not attend. Until tomorrow, 2 dogs say "Hey."