" Hi, my name is Bob and I'm?"

Oh boy. More of the same old same old. Why do I come to these God awful meetings? Just because someone said it was a good place to meet women? Geeze. I'm taking life lessons from a guy named Hounddog? The perpetual loser that he is? An addict true and through brought to good graces by the tramp he met here? Not hardly. His moment of clarity, as these people call it, did come come by way of female persuasion. He woke up in an emergency room at the brink of death then realized it's change or die. Joanne may have been at his side but it wasn't she that saved him. It was the fear of death. The sudden mortality and manic terror of dying before making his mark that kept him on this side of the grass.

Now Bob up there, what's so different about his story? Wait, what are they all laughing about? Maybe I'll take a break from myself and listen in.

" ?No! It was the most embarrassing moment of my life. Even more than my first time at a meeting in the basement of the same church my mother drug me to when I was knee high to a bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Wine! There I was, sitting at the table trying to listen in on conversations of people that actually had a life when the waiter came with my meal. Oh what a dinner! Veal piccata served over linguine with an oil and ? but I digress . I spread out the linen napkin to cover my excitement when I was overcome with the urge to relieve myself.

If you've ever been to a bar on K Alley in Baltimore, you know how narrow they are. This was a restaurant bar with an anteroom having only four dinner tables. L'amor Lo Chef. You remember? Oh the food! The Wine! The liquor! Oops! There I go again. It was barely seven feet wide by thirty feet long with the tables lining the west side wall. The restroom was at the north end and I was at the first table so it was a thirty foot jog running sideways and apologizing all the way. The building code for a men's public bathroom in The City That Bleeds, requires a toilet must be in a stall. This bathroom had the sink immediately to the left then on the right a toilet in the middle of a three foot wide stall with a door only 26 inches wide! This was four years ago so you can imagine how hard it was to squeeze my massive ass into that stall!" Rounds of laughter interrupted his recital then the applause continued for a full minute longer by the still sober ones that remember Bob two hundred pounds ago.

During the accolade a blond, very attractive woman, Sandi, explained that Bob has lost over 200 pounds since then. He went on calming his crowd with waves and nods. " I was sitting on the pot, my thighs being ruptured by the walls, my head being nauseated by the thought of how in the hell was I going to get out but the sudden urge that was so strong only minutes before has taken leave of itself. Knowing that if I didn't go now, I would soon enough so I gave a push with everything I had.

"Auughh! What am I doing here? How in the hell did I get here? Who, what are you? Am I dead?

The nurses, God bless them, managed to hold in their laughter both at the sight of me and how I got to the hospital. It was Dr. Johnathan Singh that told me. The doctor being but 5 foot nothing, weighing at maybe ninety pounds and speaking in such broken English that taking him seriously was near impossible.

He said, and I won't bore you or insult Dr. Singh by imitating his accent "Robert. You are in Saint Agnes Hospital. In the ICU unit. You were brought here by ambulance while you were unconscious after suffering a ruptured brain aneurysm. You are very lucky. Nearly half the people that have a ruptured aneurysm die immediately. Almost three quarters that do survive have permanent brain damage. You, sir, are one of the fortunate few that has survived with no apparent damage."

" Little did the doc know that I've had brain damage since puberty! I mean c'mon! I'd eat compulsively and get a boner at the sight of food! And drink to indignant excess with and between every meal. Even breakfast! Who does that? Oh yeah, Me! But the childlike doctor didn't need to know all that." More laughter.

He continued " It wasn't until months after my release that the truth of my rescue was told to me by Joanne. Stand up love!" She did to more clapping and chuckling. " She had been coming to these meetings for three years by then and was my nurse in the ICU. It was she that brought me to my first meeting. I struggled with denial, of course. Alcohol was not my problem. It was all the twisted bastards that ridiculed my immense ass and the ones that laughed at me and never gave me a break in life that was the problem. Not alcohol! Not food! We all have to eat and who wouldn't have a drink or two after being made fun of all day? Bastards!" More laughter. " But when she told the story of my arrival to Agnes, the years of denial came tumbling and rolling down like the walls of Jericho

."She said ' You need to know the truth my friend. How do you think you got off the john and into the ICU? You walked? No sir. It took six firefighters to extract your four hundred pounds out of that bathroom! There you were, slumped over, pants to the floor, toilet not flushed, white as a ghost when you were discovered by the waiter. Someone complained that the door had been locked for over ten minutes and he had to go, Bad! Bradley, the waiter, pulled himself over the stall and saw crumpled pants showing themselves under the naked rolls of leg and the back of his favorite customer's head slumped over his chest, not making a sound. He called 911 to remove the dead fat man from his bathroom. What a shame, Brad thought Damn Bob! You always left a nice tip, dammit to hell! He always rewarded my fat ass with the first table in line so as to save the embarrassment of bumping into the tables and diners along the narrow walkway thus ensuring a 30 percent tip. Sometimes more if I could spare it.

' The paramedics came in not knowing what to expect other than a dead man was trapped in the bathroom. The only EMT trained for the defib machine, just in case the man is not dead, was Tammy, a young woman five foot 2 inches tall, 90 pounds. In the matter of expediency, she did not wait for the male EMT's to break the door down. She was pushed over the stall, strapped with a stethoscope and automatic defibber in hand, and was nearly overcome by the ungodly mess that was still laying in the toilet bowl. Oh how it must have smelled!" Laughter and pee-ewws still keeping my attention on the almost slender man at the podium that belied his story.

Bob continued " Tammy flipped the door open then my tubs of lard went rolling like hot lava across the floor. She and her team of paramedics saved my life that night and Joanne has helped save it every day since. Love of my life, will you marry me?" By then Bob was down on his knees, diamond ring in hand.

How could Joanne resist? A good story with comedy and melodrama is catnip to most any woman. She'll marry him and bat him around like a mouse for the rest of his life. I couldn't suppress the laughter at that thought. So, while everyone else in the basement was clapping and crying, I was in the back row laughing uncontrollably. Oh the shame of it all!

It was my first but not last 12 step meeting. I go occasionally for entirely different reasons now. Not that I find anything wrong with the meetings. Quite the contrary. Much applause to those that are able to end a calamitous choice or disastrous disease, however you look at it. But me? I drink maybe one or two beers a year and don't need to meet any more women. Sandi and I are quite happy, thank you very much."