Should JW’s get involved with school reunion web-sites? Would the society approve?
Would a mature brother seek out bad associations via such sites?
OK, I can almost hear the groans as the WT puts another spoke in the pleasure wheel of life, but, I betcha reunion sites are a no-go area!
See what you make of this then:
I had lost touch with an old friend of many years, so I went looking for him at http://www.192.com/, which is a super site if you’re looking for someone in the UK, PROVIDING that you have a rough idea where they are living now. Certainly the county of residence is an essential requirement in order to have a hope of locating your long lost pal.
I didn’t have that information, but, because we had been at school together I took a peek at http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk/ and, there he was for all to see. I clicked on his notes and sure enough, he stated that he was into electronics and living in Surrey. As I had paid my £5 for full membership, I was also entitled to his email address, but, even without his email I had enough info to locate him by typing his name into the Surrey section of 192.com.
Then I noticed the name search facility! Hmm, I thought, I wonder if my old witness pal Joe M… is on this site? In went his name, up came several Joe M’s, but the clincher was the list of schools next to each name. Teddington, by Gum! Found him!
I went in to his notes, some blurb about being a rocket scientist [8>] or a bloke what goes down sewers in big welly boots, whatever, but no mention of his JW leanings even though I know for a fact that he is still an active dubby.
Now I was buzzin’! For hours I sat here, typing name after name into the name-search facility. In the process I also located lots of long lost “oldy worldy” types, but only 2 active male witnesses that I knew who had also registered their names. Hmm, what about the gals, I wondered?
Well, I really hit the jackpot here! Linda P for a start, easily identifiable amongst all the other Linda P’s because she came from a school in the tiny town of Cheddar and all the dates and schools matched perfectly. Hazel W, the Bradford gal, and wow, even my ex-sister in law, Kathy C from Havant Grammar School who is so pro-witness that she squeaks when she walks.
But this is what is so weird, nary a thing in any of these lasses notes about their lives in dub-dom, just lots about how successful their hubbies are, nothing much about their children though. So why are there so very many witness gals compared to hardly any witness males?
Then I saw it! The ladies feel safe posting on these sites because they are all listed under their maiden names! Of course! The site rules are explicit, ladies must use their maiden names because that is how they will be remembered by other ex-pupils!
Which means, of course, that any surfing elder stumbling across a reunion site will not be able to connect the married sister in the congregation with the skittish school-girl giggling with her pals at long-lost childish antics!
So there you have it folks, sisters in the troof can post on the internet and contact all their old teenage flames, and no-one is ever going to find out. I wonder how long it will be before we see the “Questions from readers” or “Young people ask” decrying the involvement of JW's in such school reunion sites?
Englishman.
