Hey there. I'm new to this board, so I thought I'd introduce myself with a story. It details the kind of Thursday Night we all dreaded as a young JW. Enjoy :)
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The pre-meeting study had just ended. Mum whipped the teacloth off of her head and told us all to get our meeting clothes on. Those itchy, stuffy meeting clothes! We had to wear a tie to our meetings, because dangling a length of cloth from your neck entitles you to extra Elder backslappings. But no one likes wearing a tie, so I put on my meeting clothes - minus tie - and whipped on a coat so that Mum wouldn’t be sure what I was wearing under there (so long as a bit of collar’s showing, she’ll be fine!)
It was half-past six: time to go to the meeting. I pulled a hat over my head, wrapped a scarf round my chin and set off with Mum and my two brothers. It wasn’t cold outside, of course - it was the middle of summer. A hat and a gigantic coat was the regulation camouflage for a Jehovah’s Witness youth.
So I strolled down the street, chin touching my chest, and tried to avoid eye contact with everybody who walked past. There was never any escape from the eyes of school friends, though! They would see me in my posh meeting attire and ask, “Where are you going?” I would reply with the usual, “A wedding.” I used this excuse so many times that my school friends must have thought I was a friend of the most notorious bigamist in town.
Half an hour later, I found myself stood up – song book in hand – singing the kind of kingdom song that Mariah Carey would have difficulty reaching the high notes with. After that ordeal came the next great trial: standing up through the introductory prayer. With one eye open, I’d try and make eye contact with any other kid who had temporarily broken the Matrix. And with a collective “Amen!” the congregation took their seats and sat through two boring hours of biblical nonsense. During these times, I honed my artistic abilities by drawing epic and bloody bible battles in a notepad.
Intermission arrived, and I went to the back of the kingdom hall to take a piss, and to observe the madness that went on back there: what would a kingdom hall intermission be without hearing a few spanks being delivered in the women’s toilets? After that brief and glorious respite, I had to face another hour of mind-meltingly boring talks about how our brothers in Venezuela were doing with the building of their new kingdom hall.
The meeting, as it always did, ended with a ridiculously long prayer:
...And please help Ethel - the token member of the remnant - with her arthritis... ...and please help our brothers in the African congregations get their shit together... ...and please help the brothers in our congregation, to do like the poor widow and give more than they can afford to the contribution box at the back of the hall... ...through Jesus name, Amen.
And with that, a giant collective sigh could be heard falling through the noses of the brothers and sisters, like a procrastinating turd that managed to waste two hours inside a dark hole before rolling out into the bowl with a satisfying splash.