But I'm Different

THE speaker that night was a man. Somewhere in his sixties, his speech uneducated, he told of backroom bars, of doorway sleeping, of jails. My sponsor's glance flicked over me. My thirty-two years had been an all-American dream of comfort and security. How could I identify with a story so remote from mine? My sponsor needn't have worried. I did identify--completely--all the way down the line. I still do.