Discouraging JWs From Calling (page 2)

Biahi

If I had young people at my door, I would offer to help them if they wished to leave!

NotFormer

"I remember in my early teens a man answered his door holding a frying pan with his breakfast in it, it was on fire" 🔥

😳 How did you and your offsider react to that? Did you say something like: "I can see you're busy with other things. We'll call back another time".

stan livedeath

😳 How did you and your offsider react to that? Did you say something like: "I can see you're busy with other things. We'll call back another time"

i held out the magazines--he looked at them, swore and slammed the door in my face. Strange that.

My first presentation in Field Service™. I was around 10 years old, my partner was the daughter of the couple who Studied With™ my parents. A man came to the door, and yelled at me that if I ever showed up at his door again, he would get his gun and shoot me. I was terrified.

About 5 or 6 years later, I was in high school, first day of 9th grade. I went to the assigned classroom and after everyone was sitting at their desks, the teacher strolled in. It was the very same guy. Thankfully he didn't recognize me (or so I thought), but I was on my best behaviour in that class, barely spoke because I didn't want him to recognize my voice.

At the end of the school year, he approached me and asked me to babysit his kids, and I politely declined, saying that I lived too far away. He said something about thinking I lived in his neighbourhood, and that's when I realized that he remembered me, and I'd just confirmed to him that he was correct. I was even more terrified of him after that, but because I'd planned on taking the next level of the class he taught, I couldn't say anything. I just plugged away and got good grades in that class so he couldn't criticize my work.

He died a couple of years ago and it was announced on my high school's FB page, and a long forgotten burden came to mind, and then was gone. I'd outlived the bastard.

NotFormer

Scully, an actual teacher acting that way towards a ten year old girl?? What the actual...? 😳😱😡

Scully

@NotFormer

Yeah, remember that this was in the early 70's, there weren't the kind of reporting mechanisms that there are now. And, I imagine that what he did in his own home was his business, and the school/school board couldn't do much about his behaviour toward uninvited and unwelcome people at his front door. Kids had way too much 'respect for elders' even when it was not warranted. Everyone wanted to believe that other parents were good people, and pretty much everyone had close encounters with wooden spoons when they didn't behave at home.

Teachers got away with all kinds of abusive crap toward students. My grade 7 teacher hated me because my family was JW, and whenever we had an assembly and the national anthem was played, I was usually allowed to stay outside the auditorium until it was finished, but on one occasion, the assembly started with an announcement and I was in the auditorium. Before I knew it the anthem was being played and I had been told to remain seated if everyone else was standing and singing. This particular teacher came behind me and grabbed me by the hair and forced me to my feet, and held me standing until it was over, but in the meantime some of my classmates saw what was happening and (in solidarity?) some of them sat down, knowing that she couldn't yank them to their feet by their hair like she was doing to me.

All that did to me was reinforce the Persecution Complex™ that the WTS had predicted would happen to Jesus' True Followers™

Biahi

I’m so sorry that these things happened to you, Scully. My teachers were much more understanding. I think at least some of them knew it was my parents forcing this 💩 on me. It still bugs me that my parents signed me up to be an unbaptized publisher at 6 years old. No choice whatsoever.

Sea Breeze

This particular teacher came behind me and grabbed me by the hair and forced me to my feet, and held me standing until it was over

Sorry to hear that Skully. The reality is that our parents subjected us to a bunch of unnecessary trauma to accomodate their delusion of righteousness.

TonusOH

NotFormer: an actual teacher acting that way towards a ten year old girl?

Ahhh, the USA school system in the 1970s!

Our second-grade teacher was a tall, intense man who may never have smiled in his life. He would have been described as "strict" in those days, as opposed to abusive, which is what he was. He would routinely slap or shove children (remember, this is second grade... we were seven years old) and occasionally manhandle them, such as twisting their arms behind their backs. There was a group of four or five children who were his constant targets. The rest of us kept quiet and did as we were told because the way he assaulted them was terrifying.

And our parents were fucking thrilled with the guy. In the second grade, we had memorized our multiplication and division tables, and were doing math lessons that were normally part of the fifth-grade math class. His ability to terrorize us into doing well in math was all the justification that parents needed. I have no idea what happened to him. I must assume that he either continued to traumatize children, or finally met a parent that didn't put up with his act, or maybe died of a stroke or got run over by a bus (or any other fate that would spare further generations of children).

I do feel that schools today have often gone too far in the other direction, but this guy is responsible for untold numbers of people who are messed up in some way or another. And parents thought it was great.

Discouraging JWs From Calling

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