my Champion

You'll hear people at meetings tell where they got sober.  "I got sober at the Clustercuddle Club of Inbred Antelope, Oregon," or "I got clean at the Relapse Row hall in Festerville."

In Seattle, you'll hear people talk about getting sober at Fremont.  But, there's a small distinction: some people - not so many these days - got sober at 'The Old Fremont'.  That'd be the first Fremont hall; down in the Fremont neighborhood.  It's moved a few times that I know of.  When I got introduced, it was on 85th street, next door to a bar.  Now, it's on Aurora.

The people who got their start at the original hall have to be fairly old by now; I've been clean for over two decades, and I still don't date back to the 'Old Fremont' days.  Having got into recovery young, I'm a middle-aged man by this point.  The 'Old Fremont' folks are just flat getting old.

And one of these folks from 'The Old Fremont' was an old (well, old when you're a twenty-one year old kid) hippie-esque lady who had an unimaginable twelve years in recovery.  She might have been fifty back then, which would put her into fairly advanced years nowadays.

She had sharp features, with a tongue and wit to match; brunette hair, and tended a little bit towards the Rubenesque.  Her wardrobe featured a lot of purple, and she drove a Dodge Dart.  And, she was one of those people who was never 'too busy' or 'too important' to help somebody else.  A very, very kind soul.

I remember her showing me how she used a computer to talk to to other people on something called a BBS.  There was a process of logging in, and then lines of text would appear, preceded by carats, floating on a black screen.  Yes, this is some time before I'd ever heard of facebook, twitter, apps, chat rooms, or (God help us all) AOL.

Although I didn't know it at that time, I've come to suspect that I might owe my continued membership in MSA (and possibly even recovery) to her efforts.

One of the things my Champion was known for was her insistence upon following the Twelve Traditions.  I can still remember how she'd say that early on, there were some people (misogynists, or whatever) who'd want to saddle her up and ride her around the meeting hall, and how she'd "bonk 'em with a Tradition."  The Traditions kept us all safe from each other.

She was emphatic that these twelve guidelines were something to adhere to steadfastly, if we were to survive.  And, that meant without exception.

In retrospect, I think that some of her vociferous call to stay on the 'straight and narrow' were in response to a few people wanting to make an exception for me.

Having lost a friend to alcoholism in the closing months of 2009, who had got a resentment against a member, which festered into a resentment against the membership... I don't know if I'd have relapsed if I'd been kicked out.  But, my grasp on recovery was tenuous at best - whether it would have taken more strain is up for debate.

I wish I knew anyone who could shed some light on my dim memories.  If anyone reading this remembers any of the people... I'd love to hear from you.

-M