My sister and I were raised in the "Truth", by our Mother alone, working for minimum wage. As a young child, I remember being give a dollar or two every week to put in the contribution box at the KH, my mother was making $40 to $60 a week and gave that cult $2, plus the gas for FS, plus the cost of books and magazines. We had 6 6' tall bookcases all full of the Watchtower and Awake annual volumes, back to the 50's or 40's, plus every book the WTBTS ever published. I don't remember studying any of those books, I might just be blocking the unpleasant memories.
Our biological Father abandoned the three of us, when my Mother was six months pregnant with me in Jan 1961, (I have never meet the man , he to my knowledge he never paid child support). This abandoned caused my Mother and Sister to hate men and me the unfortunate owner of a penis , became their outlet of this hatred. As far back as I can remember, I was told that I was worthless, ugly, stupid and fat. My mother decided I had Dyslexia and never miss an opportunity to remind me that I was stupid, funny no doctor ever made that diagnoses.
When I was about four an Uncle died and our Aunt moved in with us (she didn't want to have to get a job, she was another man hater, now I was living with three of them), she must have been one of the original bible students, because, she believed all of the anti-medicine, health food store, grape juice cancer cure, chiropractor, BS of the early cult. When she lived with us, we were forced to eat this health food crap and we were sick all the time. She was too lazy to peel potatoes so, she said the all of the vitamins were in the skin. Try eating boiled russet potatoes with the skins on they are disgusting, (I hate potatoes to this day because of this.) As soon as she turned 62 and could collect SS she moved out (stopped mooching off of a single mother working for minimum wage).
In 1977 at age 49 my Mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor , (probably from eating all of those health foods.) The tumor was very vascular and she had trouble finding a doctor that would attempt to remove it without blood . After consulting dozens of doctors, s he finally found a doctor that had a too big an ego to admit he couldn't help her and he opened her up to take a look around, he did this three more times, (without any positive results) before she died in 1987 at age 59.
Growing up without a father figure in my life, saved me from being sucked into the JW cult. I would have done anything to get some male attention, if any of the brothers would have given me the time of day, I would have got baptized, pioneered, became MS anything. I am so glad that those self-righteous bastards never bothered. One time when I was six or seven, our landlord (a worldly man) took me to a baseball game, I must have had too much fun, because my Mother never let it happen again, actually I am surprised she let it happen in the first place.
I went along with it until age 13, then I did the minimum required not to get kicked out into the street. At 16 found out that at least one female was attracted to me and that I was not as worthless, ugly, stupid and fat, as I had been told all of my life , that was the end of any JW cult control . I took a electronics class and found out that I was not stupid, I was actually smarter than most of the other students, I got my first job as a teachers aid in the electronics class. At 18, I got a decent job and convinced my Mother and Sister move out of the slums and share a rental in a much better neighborhood (I told my mother, I wasn't going to pay anything to live with her in the slums.) We live there until, I bought my first house two years later and let them rent from me. Shortly after that I started my first long-term relationship and it wasn't long before Mother and Sister moved out, they didn't want to be around a fornicator.
27 years later I found JWD and found out the truth about the "Truth".
magoo