Last Saturday night I volunteered to be an usher at a production of Hamlet that my college was putting on. There were only two other ushers, one of whom was a woman in her early thirties. (She was paid! Why didn't I get paid?!) She asked me if I was a student, to which I answered "yes." Then she asked how old I was.
Me: "Twenty-seven."
Her: "Oh, are you returning to get a new degree?"
Me: "No, I'm still working on my undergrad. I started attending college two years ago."
Her: "Wow. You waited a long time to go to school. What, were you in the military or something?"
Me: "Well, it was sort of like the military."
.....uncomfortable silence....
Me: "See, I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian religion which didn't promote college. I left a couple years ago..."
Blah, blah, blah...
I am getting so tired of explaining my cult past to people. When I first left the JW's I felt like I had to tell people I met right away for some reason. Awkward as this was, it made psychological sense at the time. I try not to do this anymore, although sometimes you literally get cornered into bringing the skeletons out of the closet.
I think from now on I'm just going to make it into a big joke. "Yep. I was a cultist for the first 25 years of my life. Thought the end of the world was coming. Screwed me up. I'm over it now. Pass the chips."
Yeah. That's better.
Bradley