Two Hundred Strangers

He is ten years sober on the fourteenth, and the group's oldest member hands him the medallion at the Tuesday meeting. Afterwards, in the parking lot, he photographs it in his palm and posts it that night with four words about being grateful. It is a good post and he meant every word — and telling people he is sober, even that A.A. saved his life, one face at a time, is the most effective thing a member can do. But this is not one face at a time. It is two hundred, most of them strangers to that room. The photo is taken on the table by the door, the group's laminated meeting card lying beside it — name and night perfectly legible — and his own face in the reflection off the coin. In one post he has become what A.A. looks like for two hundred people, and he has taken the group along with him: its name, its night, its hall, and nobody in that room was asked. He carried it well, as it happens. That is luck. The Tradition asks that the Fellowship's face never be one man's face — however good the man.