After spending two hours Saturday with three county sheriffs deputies, a pastor, a local IOP representative and a number of other recovering addicts, I realized that my humility had managed to get away from me again. That happens to me frequently. Anyway, we were being orientated to start taking meetings into the facility, I had been scared about this for a week because of my apparently overblown feelings of self importance. Literally decades ago I spent somewhere close to 4 1/2 years locked up for various crimes. In order to be allowed in the facility we were required to fill out a form and submit to a drug test, no fear whatsoever about passing the whiz quiz. Major fear around my prior criminal record. All the form asked was, have you ever been arrested and for what. Being the good little inquizitive addict that I am I went online and checked my record. Computer records around here, unbeknownst to me, only go back to 1990. So all I had showing were speeding tickets, I expected at the least to see "case sealed" seeing as how I was juvenile at the time of my incarceration, but no, nothing but speeding tickets. Having had enough of these to know that the line the law signs on says "Arresting Officer", I felt much better, answered yes to the question of have you ever been arrested and wrote speeding under the "for what" question. After taking the forms back to the station my ego kicked in and once again I was scared. I just knew that even though I've had no real contact with the police in almost 30 years and my juvenile record never made the journey to the computer age, I was so significant all those years ago that cops who weren't even alive back then were going to recognize me the minute we were all gathered in one room together. It turned out to be a bittersweet event, alas, I'm not the Notorious one that I thought I was. My nervous system recieved a welcome relief and my ego took another blow. I had passed the background check and other than my fellow homegroup members no one in the room recognized me. During our orientation the corrections officer informed us that the inmates will try to play us. That was all I had to hear for my ego to be off on another run, my mind is saying, hey I'm an addict, I've been locked up, been around, no one is going to manipulate me and get away with it, I'm the king of manipulation. Thank God for the miniscule amount of sanity I've somehow managed to hold onto. Just as I was about to inform the entire room that no one can get anything over on me, I remembered that I am neither the alpha, nor the omega, consequently I was able to keep my mouth shut. So now I get to obssess over the possibility that someone just might be able to get one over on me, isn't insanity just a real kick in the pants.