Another lovely Friday, another service opportunity. I blew off my Friday noon Overeaters Anonymous meeting to do service at a local high school health fair. I’ve done this one before. Twice before. Did the table a little differently.

High School Health Fair 2010

Same old banner we’ve used before.  It has the 15 questions, not the 10 teen questions. I’ve wanted to see about adding a new banner for teen outreach but I’m glad I didn’t. I understand our teen literature is undergoing an update and the questions will be changed/expanded, which is wonderful.

This year we added a literature rack, courtesy of  the local AA intergroup (well, not courtesy. We paid for it) and a little OA display with the Preamble, Many Symptom, the teen questions and a few pieces of literature.

We had a nice turnout. Not much literature was taken.

One group of 3 teens came up asking about OA. In the back was a large boy. Maybe 6 feet and very heavy. He stuck around and told me about his sisters and their problem with food. We talked for maybe three minutes. He took some literature.

It’s always a bit of a challenge, when speaking to a group of people, one of who wears the symptoms of an overeater, to maintain a uniform rotation of eye contact with each member of the group. I want to speak to the big person but I speak to each as attentively as I can.  I always love showing them my picture, at an Olive Garden, napkin tucked under my chin, looking miserable. Very sad.

I was asked by about 5 groups of kids what OA’s environmental impact was. Huh? It took me a bit to realize that the answer is right there in tradition 10. OA takes no position on outside issues. OA has an environmental impact. I would like to think that recovery from any addiction has a positive impact on the environment. Maybe we should talk about that but if we do, we’ll talk amongst ourselves. Environmental impact is an outside issue. So my answer, which I was told was clearer and more concrete than the answer provided by any other table at the fair was, we don’t discuss outside issues. I showed them tradition 10 and said we focus on recovery from compulsive eating. Full stop.

That was fun.

I don’t really expect this outreach to make much of an impact. I do hope we’ve planted a seed. It was hard to compete with the booth next to us which was all about sex. Which gives out candy and rubber wrist bands.  Which has a lighted game board. I didn’t get to play. The line was too long.

I will entertain ideas for making a visit to the OA booth fun. Pie eating contest perhaps?