Cellphone-a-holics Anonymous

I stopped drinking on 12/15 after a very scary vertical blackout in Tokyo. But I have been thinking, as of late, about hitting the bottle again. Tonight, I started for the liquor store, but came back home and found an AA meeting on the net. My first ever. Went there---in realtime---instead. Talk about changing horses mid-stream! But what happened at the meeting just seemed like the ultimate bad joke.

All the way through various sharings, a woman continued to text message with her Blackberry (i.e. cell phone) which kept going off and loudly beeping at intervals of (I swear) every couple of minutes or so. Clearly these calls and/or messages were not of an emergency nature. It did not seem to bother anyone else, I must confess. After all it is L.A. But it drove me from the meeting at the midway point. Even worse than that "higher power" nonsense.

Maybe the others' seeming indifference was just an extreme example of well-known AA tolerance. But it's doubtful I could ever get used to it. It's a miracle I didn't stop for a bottle on the way home. Not funny, but true.

I suppose that it's a new world out there. Still it strikes me that the line has to be drawn SOMEWHERE. It would seem that there should be an overall AA policy against what I consider this extreme form of rudeness. A mad scientist could not have devised a more efficient way of alienating me from AA. . .right out of the starting gate.

Maybe the woman should be in a support group for cell phone addicts instead.

All of which reminds me of one of my all-time favorite jokes.

L.A. comic #1: I'm sorry I can't have lunch with you tomorrow. I have an AA meeting.

L.A. comic #2: But you're not an alcoholic.

L.A. comic #1: I know, but I need the floor time.

BUD-A-BING!