I remember when I was a kid, how the importance of meeting attendance was continually drummed into our heads. Through the magazines, meetings, and especially traveling overseers, it was stressed that missing just one meeting was akin to allowing Satan into our lives and would jeopardize our everlasting life in paradise earth.
One particular bit of 'advice' stood out, even to a small child: even if out of town relatives showed up on meeting day, you shouldn't let that cause you to miss a meeting. I remember trying to play that out in mind... 'Welcome, Grandpa! My, you must have traveled for days to get here. I'd invite you in, but we're getting ready to leave for the Kingdom Hall. Want to come with us?' Stupid. No matter how I tried to play it, it just didn't make sense. I figured then that some things were exaggerated to make a point, and no one would really expect you to live up to such nonsensical standards.
Fast forward several decades:
A couple that we were friends with in the hall moved to another state. My wife kept up with them more than I did, especially after I learned TTATT. But for awhile they communicated, and our friends always made it clear, 'if you're ever in our area, let us know so we can get together'.
Well, in time we did travel to their area. My wife pre-arranged a meet up...sort of. We didn't know our exact schedule but we knew we would be in the area in a certain 24 hour period. So they knew we were going to be in town, just not the exact hour.
When we knew a more exact time, my wife called to let them know. Their response? 'Oh. We'll just be leaving for the hall at that time. We won't be able to meet this time. Maybe next time.' Really? You can't dump one of your 5 (at the time) meetings of the week, to spend time with old friends? I guess we weren't really that close of friends, after all.
The WT indoctrination does work, even down to blowing off old friends to attend the same humdrum, boring WT meeting
