Starbucks Summit Revisited

Yes my friend that is all true, what you said about the writing friendship, it's all true (sniff). I was telling my wife that we are no longer allowed to move from this area (we have a bit of a familial wanderlust) because I've found a friend. I have a friend, a buddy, a pal, someone who gets me, someone I can snigger with and with whom I can barter my sandwiches and snacks during lunchtime.

That was the height of intimacy in school; letting someone get to know your lunch. Letting someone get to know the dietary tendencies and shortcomings of your household. I knew I was really and truly friends with a person when I let them know that the tangled, spongelike collection of sprouts in the plastic baggie had been grown by my mother in the dark pantry below the basement stairs and that yes, she expected me to eat them. If my friends didn't disown me then, I knew we were going to be okay. And imagine my joy when Tim Sweeten actually expressed an interest in trading his Oscar Meyer Bologna w/mayo for my mother's whole-wheat/natural peanut butter/organic preserves PB&Js.

We do something similar in these Starbucks sessions; we pull out our crinkly, grease-bespotted brown bags. We dig inside, we lay the contents out on the table and then, when all our treasures (and trash) are lined up for inspection, we help the other see that it's not so bad. That it's salvageable. That with a little rearranging and a couple of prudent trades (and yes, maybe those creepy sprouts go in the trash) a fine lunch can be had by all.

Have I crushed, pulverized and pestled this metaphor into nothingness yet?

Good. Moving on to the RecoRoCo. I don't get your concerns about anonymity at all. The program is not anonymous. It's far too late for that; the program, the format for meetings and the 12 steps of recovery have long since entered the pop-culture lexicon. We can't put those cows back in the barn. As for breaking anyone's specific anonymity, I have very little concern that we'll do something like that. The names, locations, etc. will be changed.

Funny, I have no qualms whatsoever where this is concerned, nor do I have any issues with how the recovery movement is portrayed. To me, it's not perfect. Meetings are full of psychotics, hustlers, liars, perverts, and hypocrites (and that's just when I show up!). And yet it somehow *still works*. And that, that underlying miracle -- the sum total of our defects and miseries adding up to something positive -- is a theme that I believe could be explored in a comedic way.

Just my thoughts.