blondies post on an earlier thread re the gate crashers at the assemblies running to "save" the best seats got me to thinking..
just what constitutes a "good seat" at an assembly?
i've never quite understood that.
At the DC's I grew up attending, the "best" seats were the ones in the middle area of the coliseum.
You had the hard plastic seats above this area, and you had the hard seats and armless cushioned "fold-up" seats (almost worse than the hard seats!) below this area.
But those middle seats! Deep, soft, cushiony, and had arms. You could just sink down and go right to sleep.
Boy, was competition fierce for those middle seats.....downright ugly.
what songs or groups were you forbidden to listen to as a jw?
were any specifically mentioned from the platform or were you counseled not to listen to a certain song?
for me it was the entire def leopard hysteria album - bad heavy metal told it was demonic, i listened to it in secret, silk's "freak me" - a virgin listening to a song about hot sex?
Does anyone remember the articles from the 70's "counseling" against disco? I was a little kid then, but my dad has all the old WT and "Asleep!" volumes.
I also remember a negative mention somewhere in WT "literature" regarding The Twist dance.
My dad hates homosexuals and effeminate men; Boy George was specifically singled out as one musician we absolutely could NOT listen to. My folks were surprisingly lax as far as our music was concerned. Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach" was okay until another Dub parent convinced my parents to ban it from our house.
victorian sky has a great thread on music.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/57646/1.ashx.
it got me thinking, about tv shows, anything in particular you were told not to watch, being a little kid in the 70's i do remember hearing shows from the platform that we should not watch.
Actually, we couldn't get much on our tiny TV, out in the middle of nowhere. We couldn't get more than 2 or 3 channels, much less cable. It's still like that on the ol' homeplace today.
We really couldn't watch much. Any show with make-out scenes or "sex" scenes was not allowed. We had to turn it off. My folks had more of a hang-up with anything remotely sexual, more so than violence on TV.
The biggest thing with my folks was holiday specials. Thus, I saw "A Charlie Brown Christmas" for the very first time last year at the ripe old age of 32.....and STILL haven't seen "How The Grinch Stole Christmas."
Isn't that sad?
which one has more class?.
if you had to choose one, who would you see in concert?
me, bjork.
Bjork, of course. I love all her music and have just about all her albums.
Actually, I'd love to see her in concert just singing one song, "Pagan Poetry". She could just spend the whole concert singing that one song and I'd be happy.
That's one song I can listen to repeatedly, ad nauseam, and never get tired of.....
what experience at an assembly or convention caused you to raise your eyebrows in disbelief?.
one that comes to mind is a 5 year old conducting several bible studies.
wasn't it hard enough for an adult to get a bible study?
My cousin used to sell drugs (as in, crack) to the housing projects that surrounded the coliseum.
He'd disappear during the sessions to do this...I always used to see him coming back from over there with all this cash...his mom was deeply "in the troof" but he wasn't.
I
since before a witness gets baptized, they are told to "be no part of this world".
that is beaten into everyone's head.
now that you're not a jw or are on the way out, how does being part of the "world" feel?
immensely.
.
was there anything in particular that drove you nuts at the kingdom hall ??
?
URRRGGGHHHH
WHERE shall I begin?
I hated, hated, HATED when a speaker would audibly swallow into the microphone. Or "blow" his b and p words. Or worse yet, smack his lips into the microphone before going to the next sentence. This was irritating enough to make me get up and step outside.
I hear you regarding KH decor. When the KH was remodeled at my old cong., my elder dad had all the samples/colors for the carpet and chairs. I was actually asked for my opinion. Mind you, we had those spartan metal fold-up chairs and totally nondescript carpet, so I--artist that I am--was pushing HARD for some DAMNED COLOR IN THE PLACE. Nothing chic-y or funky, just shades of BLUE, for God's sake. Blue carpet and blue chairs in complementing shades of blue.
This must've been just too much frivolity, for he consulted a group of staid, single Pioneer sisters, one of whom picked out industrial brown chairs and industrial brown carpet. Just about as nondescript, institutional, dull brown as they come.
Another hideously irritating peeve, was the simultaneous sound of Watchtowers being opened at the beginning of the Watchtower study, right after the intermission song. That sound made me want to rip my ears off.
[now for the rest of the story ... it begans again below with ### in front of the continuation] .
well, well, well ... well, well ... well, uhmmmmm ... this ought to be good .
these two ladies were standing there ... one was obviously an elder's wife ... say late 40s ... likely aux.
... I retorted that David Koresh loved to read that verse to his few followers at Waco ... who believed that only they as a chosen few had found the True path to life ... she closed her Bible with a snap ...
heh heh heh heh heh.....
the reason i ask this question is because when i became a jw i had 3 little children who relied on me for everything, including making the right medical decisions for them.. it really terrifies me when i think back to that time because i was so committed (i should have been actually) that i use to send my kids to school with the 'no blood' card hanging around their necks...........omg.
i also filled in all their medical forms with 'no blood' in the 'special instructions' box.. well, since then, many bad things have happened to me and my family at the hands of the borg and individual dubs.
also, many other things have come to light (not their light) that has proven the wts wrong and dangerous.
My grandmother was going to let her grown son die (my uncle) without a blood transfusion.....and he hasn't stepped foot in a Kingdom Hall in my entire living memory. I'll be 33 years old. I don't think he's been inside a Kingdom Hall since his early teens. He's at least approaching early 50's now.
She's his power-of-attorney. She was scrambling around trying to contact those "WT Blood Liason" people (don't know the exact name) From what I remember, my elder dad was telling her it was useless to contact them because of Uncle's status (if one ever existed) in the org. This whole incident happened about 2 years ago. I remember his non-JW kids being terribly upset and begging her to change her mind.
I'm deeply sorry to all those who've lost friends/family members on the board to the blood issue.
*many* ex-jws say that they were robbed of an education due to the wtbts and as a result, they feel that their families and the wt screwed up their life by depriving them of the opportunity to go to college and therefore, earn a high salary at a job they love.
here is a link to the us census which shows that approximately 26% of the us population graduates college.
page 5, towards the bottom, shows the college graduation stats.
1. Would have gone on to college....
Yes, I would have gone on to college. Teachers in my younger school years wanted to send me to a school for the gifted, but of course that was a no-no with the folks.
2. Would have graduated college.....
Yes I probably would have graduated college as well.
3. Would have a *great job, earning lots of money* if they had had the opportunity to go to college.
I'm not sure about making *lots* of money, but I would have had a much better job than I have now...an actual career doing what I have talent in (art) instead of just working to keep a roof over my head. I would probably have travelled around the world as well...
4. Saying you were deprived of college is a broad statement. Do you know if your parents had a college fund set up for you? Did you have a secret stash of money you were going use to pay for college?
Why would that be a "broad" statement? My parents had the chance to send me to an real college when I was in the 5th grade (a special program for gifted kids that would've lasted the whole summer) but of course, being hardcore JW's, "steadfastly" refused. If there exists any "stash" or "fund" in THIS family, it would've been set up solely FOR my dad and BY my dad. He's the one who simply had to have brand-new suits for the assemblies while the rest of us picked cucumbers to raise $$$ to buy materials for our homemade outfits. Even today, he refuses to allow satellite cable so my mom can watch more than 2 channels (too deep in the woods for cable service), whilst he lavishes $$$ on fax machines, laptops, and expensive hunting-dog tracking equipment. College fund for US....HA!!!!!
Right before I graduated H.S., I had a couple of teachers who saw my potential in spite of my poor grades and really tried, begged, WANTED to help me attend college in some way...were willing to go to bat for me so I could attend college. But of course, having had drilled into my head that the end was coming soon, I refused--knowing what my parents would say if they found out.
Yes-----I. WAS. DEPRIVED.
5. how were you and your family going to fund your college education?
Please see my above response.
6. Did you take the SAT or ACT?
No. I've never even heard of an ACT.
7. Did you get good to great grades in high school?
My grades were great until I hit H.S. I did well in the subjects that interested me but wasn't motivated enough to try in the classes that were more difficult. Throughout my childhood and teenhood I maintained a fierce, voracious love of reading--just about everything I could get my hands on (age-appropriate material be damned, I didn't care). I learned to read very early, even then I understood most of what I read, and was still ahead of my school peers, even in H.S.--I'd read encyclopedias, dictionaries, borrow textbooks from older kids to read, etc. But I read for pleasure and escape, not because I was trying to get into college.
8. Were your parents focused on academics and did they really push you to get all you could from the educational system?
My parents were so convinced that 1975 was "the end" that they kept me out of kindergarten that year. I don't suffer the consequences from that now, but I had an EXTREMELY TRAUMATIC time starting school--I was basically put on a bus one day out of the blue, with no explanation. In addition to extreme hysteria at the very sight of a school bus (had to be physically restrained inside to keep from fighting my way out of the bus) I was extremely withdrawn and did terribly in the 1st two years of school.
Education has always been, and always will, be dead-last in my parents' eyes. We were allowed to drift along in school, from the very beginning. My mom would either let us eschew school projects or scramble around throwing some shit together to pass for a school project---then call and "explain" to the teacher that we were JW's and needed special consideration for our schoolwork. When you are raised from the beginning to view education as dead-last and college as "something worldly folks did", and are expected to remain at home working at grocery stores and pioneering, you really don't see the importance of academics.
Even now, you should hear my father's opinions on universities. Just because 1975 has come and gone doesn't mean that my parents don't live like the end is imminent. We grew up with that mentality and they maintain it to this day. I used to, as a teen, plan to kill myself before the year 1999 because I was sure that the end would occur and knew I was too afraid to see it come. Why, I don't recall ever seeing any college attendees NOR graduates in my entire former congregation. And guess what? IT'S STILL LIKE THAT TODAY.
9. Were you prepared to go to a community college, take out loans, ask for grants, work to fill out the financial picture; all to pay for your education?
No, I wasn't. Even though I "drifted away" in my very early 20's, it still took me a good 6-7 years to rid myself of the notion that "people like us" weren't "supposed" to go to college.
A final thought--I am sad to say, I don't think my parents really care at all. Why my dad as much as told us (when we were teens getting in trouble trying to see boys) that people like us were NOT going to stop him from getting into "God's Kingdom."
