oh yeah, and those lovely hot humid sweat drenched days sitting with sore swollen ankles and feet..........and then THAT was your lovely summer vacation. you go back to school and the kids are all yapping about the beach or something really cool and they ask you....well......i went to new york city. stayed in a hotel..........rode a sardine packed subway smashed between stinky sweaty people....this was pre-air conditioning days........then when the sessions were over it would take like 45 minutes just to get down the ramp and back to the subway to roast and faint yet again. no wonder so many of us have post traumatic stress disorder.
Assemblies
by finnrot 20 Replies latest jw friends
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sabastious
The best treat I remember was the cantaloupe cut in half with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle, I still have fond memorie of how ggood that tasted. I must admit that I enjoyed the plays that they had on the stage on the baseball field, but I was just there for the entertainment and the food, the long boring talks were for scoping out the girls and just using my binoculars to look at anything but the boring speakers.
I too have a lot of fond memories at the conventions. None of which involved listening to the speakers.
-Sab
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james_woods
Plus - let us not forget that the powers that be in Brooklyn have systematically killed off every remotely fun thing about the old assemblies and replaced it all with Nazi-like rules.
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sabastious
I've always hated assemblies too. They were WAY too long! The material could be covered in a WT study article rather than incoveniencing everyone. It is so difficult for the elderly, the handicapped, people with babies or small children, to travel and sit in those cramped seats all day. An entire day's worth of material could be covered in a one-hour WT study.
Handicapped people and the elderly still pay up at the donation boxes. That's the main reason why the conventions even exist. That and massive guilt trips that help the members stay in the fold so that they will be there the following year donating more tax free money.
-Sab
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mrsjones5
Yes, but think how much more fun you would've had if they took you to Disney Land instead, LOL!
Yeah, well I was fortunate to have spiritually weak parents who took us on real vacations instead of relying on a crappy assemblies for summer fun.
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undercover
As a teenager and a young, single 20-something, conventions were actually pretty fun. Not the sessions or the talks, symposiums or dramas. No, it was the getting friends together and renting rooms at a hotel and having parties. It was meeting girls from other congregations. It was seeing said girls in bikinis at the hotel pool. It was eating out with groups of friends. It was piling in cars at lunch and leaving for a cool restaurant/bar for lunch. It was staying up late in the hotel bar (drinking age was 18 back then). It was freedom from parents, elders and escape from the normal hum-drum schedule of meeting/service on the weekend.
The sesssions did prove useful as well. If you went up high in the upper deck of the coliseum it was cooler and darker. A great oppurtunity to catch up on the sleep lost the night before and to escape the harsh glare of the lights focused on the stage...those damned lights that made hangovers just that much worse.
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sabastious
As a teenager and a young, single 20-something, conventions were actually pretty fun. Not the sessions or the talks, symposiums or dramas. No, it was the getting friends together and renting rooms at a hotel and having parties. It was meeting girls from other congregations. It was seeing said girls in bikinis at the hotel pool. It was eating out with groups of friends. It was piling in cars at lunch and leaving for a cool restaurant/bar for lunch. It was staying up late in the hotel bar (drinking age was 18 back then). It was freedom from parents, elders and escape from the normal hum-drum schedule of meeting/service on the weekend.
Add in some weed and you got the perfect scanario.
-Sab
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aSphereisnotaCircle
Remember, they had morning, afternoon AND evening sessions, each running 3-4 hours long.
Insane
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scary21
One assembly in Chicago, 1968 or 69 I was 14 or 15 yrs old. i got so bored I left and went to the zoo all by myself. The next day I was still bored so I went walking around outside..........met another bored Jw boy......he asked me to go back to his parents hotel room where it was cool
and we could talk (I know that was stupid ).....well we did kiss a little ( he was really cute ) I had hopes that maybe he could end up being my BF...well he got mad because I wouldn't have sex with him.....he called for a hotel limo and the driver drove me back...I never heard from him again. I was lonely..
and just wanted to have some FUN.... I guess he wanted something else....lol I was semi bad , he was totally a bad bad boy and not a gentleman!
There was a group of young JW....16 and 17 they never included me because I was too young.......The worldly kids didn't think so......so thats where I
got my friends......They treated me better than any teenage JW ever did.....what a stuck up group (JW ) that was.....Now I'm glad they were! I too loved the material food provided by the rank & file lol sorry about my typing Sherry
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WTWizard
These things have been going downhill. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, you actually had real food. There was more drama back then. They were longer, but there was actually something that passed for a message (albeit false). And you had fewer rules about regular moving around back in those times.
Now, there is nothing for food except what you manage to bring in yourself. They have more people making sure people are doing exactly what they are supposed to, not roaming around. You are more likely to have assigned seating--each congregation is assigned a section. You are more likely these days to see paper towels rationed, and toilet paper is rationed in a few locations. The program is usually more wimpy--just re-iteration of previous programs. The experiences are more blatantly fake or embellished--sometimes extremely fake. Most everyone has heard of the crocodile waters and walking 20 miles each way to attend a boasting session and returning to a beating and being locked out, yet they continue using it. Most everyone has heard of the father that had a decent job but quit it and pio-sneered, only to leave out the part where he becomes destitute in old age.
And, it is getting harder to find members of the opposite sex. These days, the Filthful and Disgraceful Slavebugger puts out "timely reminders" about paying attention to the program and not the audience. And, with more hounders and acting hounders patrolling the area, you are more likely to get busted if you are paying attention to anything but the program. You are more likely these days to get stopped if you are milling around--back in the 1990s, you could get away with it. Now, you are as likely to have to report why you are not in your seat. They are becoming more and more unreasonable--and I expect that trend to become even more widespread in the future. If your area isn't yet experiencing this kind of patrolling, it will soon.