I have a hard time getting up in the morning. I am not a morning person at all. In fact people who know me have often joke about the various loud noises that have been seemingly brushed aside by my slumbers.
It was hard for me to get up for the conventions. They were mostly in San Fransisco which is 4 and a half hours away from where I grew up. Many times my family would leave the morning of the convention which started at the top of 9 o'clock in the morning; at least I got to see the sunset on the drive over!
At the end of these three day conventions, starting on a friday, they would always be finalized with a new Jehovah's Witness publication. The last talk of sunday was always a pitch for it's existence in the world of books and we would all clap for it. If I remembered correctly I thought I heard the speaker say the book was free of charge and the word "donation" was in there somewhere. Now, as a kid, I knew that the word donation meant "up to us." I never really wanted the books anyway, but my dad just loved them. He eagerly anticipated them like a new crime novel in his favorite fictional series. I would pick them up and attempt to read them. There was just no way to get through it cover to cover and no reason to either. Always something about what something in the Bible symbolizes or how happy God is that we are all his sheep. There was always something in there that jabbed at the conscience too. Something to work on; some "personal goals" like: "I'm going to stop watching objectionable movies" or "I am going to stop that friendship I have developed with someone at school or work." I didn't fully realize how creeped out I was by them even then.
I couldn't get through them! But my dad ate them up like candy and he paid for them too. He always acted so compulsory about the "donations." He would say things like "we gotta pay for the expenses." I remembered the donation box we have at our Kingdom Hall that had "World Wide Work" printed on it. Wasn't that where we "paid for expenses" too? I always secretly wanted him to take the books home without paying like they said we could do just to keep them honest.
-Sab