Once I was around my homegroup long enough, the free ride was over!  You better get into Service, buddy.  It don’t matter if it’s Ashtrays, Brooms, and Coffee, or Assemblies, Boards, and Committees, but you gotta learn your ABCs.

Now, I’d heard of people who “volunteered” for stuff they didn’t get paid for, but nobody in my family knew much about that.  Either there was a payout—preferably in cash or goods—or you were suckered.  There were favors, but that wasn’t free stuff.  Favors were accounted for.  Favors were IOUs.

This Service stuff was a giant pain, but it did make me feel grown up, like I belonged with people from another part of town, people who were big enough to be “civic minded.”  I went to “business meetings.”  I learned how other folks did all that secret stuff like council meetings, and chamber of commerce: they had something called Robert’s Rules of Order.  These rules helped a lot to avoid people from wantin to grab weapons, or throw hands or chairs.  It was just like havin rules for a game: you can’t catch the ball outta bounds; you gotta cross this line to score points.  That made a lotta sense.  Nobody liked playin with cheaters, those guys who changed the rules and the markers to suit em.  This way everybody knew the field.

The rules aren’t on the jumbotron when you go to the game.  You gotta learn.  Somebody teaches you.  You play.  You watch.

A homegroup guy named Randall talked about his Randall’s Rules of Recovery.  He’d say, “Left to my own devices, it’s still about car, house, job, girl.  You know: when you have the right car, house, job, girl—you’re recovered.”

He was makin a point about what most of us went back to once we left the meeting.  Outside was a different game than inside.  Football ain’t baseball.  Maybe you can run some yards AND swing a bat, but those are still two different games.  Different fields, different rules.  “Did you see how I gained 30 yards on that play?”

“Doesn’t matter, man, you still got tagged out; this is baseball.”

Randall’s point was: I come into recovery and I can’t stop thinkin about the rules of the other game, but they don’t apply.  Maybe I get a car, maybe I don’t.  Maybe I get a house, maybe I don’t.  Maybe I still hate my job, maybe I get one I like.  Maybe I get married; maybe I get divorced.  The Steps don’t specify any of that, and none of that specifies that I’ll get recovery.  Two different things.

I had to learn a whole new game, with a different object, a different way to score.  I was gonna need to learn the rules.  Somebody would hafta teach me.  I’d play.  I’d watch.

All this is just the rules.  This is nothin about the strategies of the game.  Finding your own agility and weakness.

Some athletes can tell ya stories about their sportual awakening, when they went into another game, maybe it was a lark, or a hobby, for relaxation.  And they learned something from that other sport that was a great advantage in their primary sport—something that they’d never picked up from all their concentration in their main sport.

You can hear a lotta those stories in the recovery game.  People who’ve learned the rules and strategy from playing it a long time can tell you what they never picked up from playing the outside game.  Afterall, most everybody came in only when all our outside game scorecards read zero.  Just staying in the outside game is an improvement.  Getting any points at all is gravy.