Arrive at least 20 minutes early and stay at least 20 minutes late to "fellowship" with the "friends". (I hated when they said we should "fellowship" with each other; that doesn't even make grammatical sense.)
Always sit in a different seat at each meeting so you can broaden out and get to know others in the congregation. Interestingly, the elder who gave this admonition was a major creature of habit and always sat in the exact same seat every single meeting for years and years. Inner isle seat fourth row from the platform.
Don't even think about sitting in the back row unless you're 15 minutes late for the meeting and have 10 kids. Maybe they'll let you sit in the back instead of parading you to the front row where no one else wanted to sit (except the over-eager sister who always sat front and center and took extensive notes at every meeting).
No gum or candy.
Brothers were not allowed to even run mics without having a jacket on. Never mind that there were times the AC wasn't working, and of course there were no windows, and it was 90 degrees in the KH. If you ran a mic, you had to have a jacket on.
When LDB and I were still just studying, we were dating, and had been for years before starting our brainwashing sessions. But when we started coming to the meetings regularly, we were "counseled" that we shouldn't be arriving together in the same car since we weren't married. It would set a bad example to the teenagers in the congregation. Gee, I guess the fact that we studied regularly and came to meetings regularly pretty early on and even started commenting at the meetings wasn't near enough of a good example to the others. How stumbling it must have been for others to see us arrive together in the same car! Oh my god, what were we thinking? By the way, we didn't live together before we got married-I just lived a little farther away from the KH than LDB did so I'd just drive to his apartment and we'd go to the KH together in his car. Besides, walking in to the KH together was so much less intimidating to me than having to walk in alone when I was new to "da troof".
Don't clap when someone gets reinstated. Do clap when someone becomes an unbaptized publisher. Do clap for the auxiliary pioneers who had been "approved" for the "privilege" this month. I refused to clap for them, because I felt it was against everything else we had been told about 'just doing your personal best' and not 'comparing yourself to others' and 'everybody's circumstances are different', blah blah blah. If I was going to clap for them, then they should have had to clap for my 10 hours a month when I worked full time, struggled horribly with narcolepsy (then undiagnosed and not treated), had a child with health problems, a husband, a house to keep up, etc.
Sorry about my ramblings. Sometimes it just feels good to vent.
