Lessons Learned

RunningMan

Chapter xx: Lessons Learned
One year, I’m guessing I was around ten years old, I returned from the summer district convention with a new word. I had never heard it before, so a couple of days after returning, I asked my older sister what it meant.
“Masterbation?” She asked, a bit taken aback. “Where did you hear that word?”
“At the District Convention,” I replied.
I will interrupt this exchange with a bit of background. On route to the “new world”, which is kind of like a rapture, but a little more commonplace, Jehovah’s Witnesses fight many evils in this world. One of the greatest of these centers around the adolescent struggle against self stimulation. Apparently, God sat back and watched babies being sent to the ovens in Auschwitz, but if you slap the ham, he’s gonna come down to earth and kick your ass.
Anyway, returning to my story, the recent District Assembly had thoroughly denounced the above named practice. And, since Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t have a Sunday school for kids, everyone young and old gets to hear the same sermon. At ten years of age, I learned my lesson well. I just didn’t know what it was I should be avoiding.
So, my sister paused for a minute to carefully choose her answer. Would she launch into a sex education lesson, one which would surely spawn more questions than it answered? No, she took the high road.
“Oh, there’s no such thing as masturbation. They said mass starvation.”
You’ve got to love the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They will send the entire male population of the earth to hell for burping the worm, while looking forward to the prospect of mass starvation with glee.
My question had been fully answered, and I never thought about it again for many years.
I believe that this was the same convention that did away with my baseball card collection.
I was an avid sports fan and collector of baseball and hockey cards. On the farm in the 1960’s, we received precisely one TV channel. It was the CBC, and we watched it in the glory of black and white. Every Wednesday night during the summer, the Montreal Expos were on TV, and I rarely missed a game. My card collection contained numerous first year Expos from their maiden season, including my hero, Rusty Staub.
The district convention that denounced mass starvation apparently also highlighted the evils of idol worship, which insidiously infects us through baseball cards. As I mentioned earlier, I learned my lessons well that year. So, the morning after we returned from the convention, my mother was putting something into our wood stove and noticed an unusual pack of objects. Further investigations revealed my baseball and hockey cards on top of the rest of the rubble.
My mother questioned me on it, to which I piously replied, “We learned at the assembly that we shouldn’t idolize men by collecting cards.” Mom was suitably impressed with her righteous son and went off to plan my future as a missionary. Man, was I an ass. Those things would probably be worth quite a lot today.
And, speaking of being an ass, let’s fast forward another decade to yet another purge. By this time, I was in my early 20’s and was living on my own. The Watchtower Society, in its infinite wisdom, had decided that most modern music was debased. Some of it was worse than others. For example, groups like Led Zeppelin were trying to control young people’s minds by hiding backward messages on their albums. But, some music didn’t need to use nefarious techniques. It was just plain evil.
So, here again, I returned from a District Convention in Regina and piously sorted through another prized collection – this time it was music. Soft Cell was an obvious choice for the junk bin. I still puzzle over why I got rid of a Gary Neuman double LP. I can’t remember the rest. I’m pretty sure I could hear demons screaming as I broke the records.
A couple years later, there was yet another purge. However, by this time, I had moderated somewhat. I sent my Quiet Riot album over to a friend’s place to visit until the heat was off. By the way, Brian, I still want that back.