This all happened when I was a kid, and I think I must have been around 8 years old. We were at a meeting, and my dad (MS) had held a speech. This didn`t happen very often, actually, this one time is the only one I can remember. My dad had epilepsy (connected to the brain tumor he had surgically removed in his mid-thirties, which came back and killed him at 46). Half-way thru the speech he started mumbling, looked a bit out of balance, like he wasn`t himself, finished quickly, walked down and took his seat. Then he leaned over to the side, drewling, and the seizure began. It took us all by surprise, because he hadn`t had one for a long time (he was on medication for it), and this seizure was the worst one I had seen. The entire KH was in uproar, of course, and the men rushed to help, and they sure worked up a sweat. My father was a big man, 120 kilos, strong as an ox, it took 8 guys to hold him down. One ripped his belt of to stick in dads mouth (I have no idea how he knew that he was supposed to do that, maybe he had seen it in a movie or something), but it was to late, my father had allready bit of a small slice of his tongue. There was blood all over his face. The ambulance came, and the paramedics rushed into the hall, put my dad on a stretcher,and took him out in the amublance.
The thing is: I was so embarassed! Never mind the fact that my father could have died, choked on his own tongue. No, it was all about me. Me, myself and I. I was so embarassed of being a witness-kid, that I turned away when the paramedics came, so they couldn`t see my face. My shame over being a witness-kid was stronger than even the concern over the life and health of my family members. Not that they were any good anyway, but still. How can any kid care so little about his own parents, that it`s more important that noone knows your parents are JWs? When we were walking to and from the car outside the hall, I would always walk with my head turned toward the hall, because there was a kid at school that lived on the other side of the street, and his bedroom-window was toward the street (he shot an elder in the neck with a bee-bee-gun once from his window, lol).
Anyway, here is the Catch22: I was always aware of this! I always knew that my shame over being a witness-kid was so strong that I would have gone to extreme lengths to deny that I was a JW. And what if the great tribulation came? My parents could have been persecuted and beaten to death before my own eyes, and I would have been Peter, denying them time after time. I knew this! And that filled me with even more shame! It made me feel like I was such a horrible, horrible person.
I don`t know why I am telling you this. It still bothers me, I guess. The shame of being a JW can be so overwhelming for children. I feel so sorry for all the JW-kids of the world. Being a JW-kid is just layer upon layer of shame, shame, shame, selfhatred, shame, shame, shame, shame over feeling ashamed, ashamed, ashamed! I sometimes wonder how I made it thru at all.