I was in my last 2 years of high school (68, 69) when the articles, books, talks, and speculation about 1975 started to swell. Of course at that impressionable age and with my uber family's not so subtle influence, I was swept along with the hype.
However Pisstoff makes an important point about the prevailing attitude of now or never sex. My MS, pioneer, son of the Congregation Servant boyfriend pressured me to become engaged to him at age 16. I succumbed and was married at age 17 in 1969. (my father was dead but where was my mother?)
As a married teenager and young twenty something in the 1970's who had overly strict and abusive parents, life was never better! I could FINALLY move away and come and go as I pleased. I didn't realize my hubby was living a double life and didn't believe a word of the hype. We attended parties and gave them, entertained, went to movies every week ETC.
Our new cong was very small (about 30 pubs) when we moved there in '71. By '75 there were almost 80 including the 4 that I studied with. I hate to admit it but seeing that kind of growth and enthusiasm was faith strengthening. The scrip about "10 men taking hold of the skirt of a Jew" was read weekly so it seemed to my young uneducated mind to confirm that Jw's had the truth. I was enjoying my life so much I secretly hoped the big A would be late but didn't DARE breathe a word to anyone not even hubby and he did the same.
When '75 came and went so did many in our KH. I chocked it up to people being "Rice Christians" then selfishly leaving when they didn't receive the big reward. I didn't want to be a selfish person so I stayed willfully and blissfully ignorant like so many others.