Hello, I was born in the UK. I no longer live there. My parents became Jehovah’s witnesses in 1960, when I was about four years old. So basically that’s all I’ve known. My father was overly strict with us kids, aided and abetted by the WT Society, and used to beat or thrash us with a leather belt or swishy stick. When young, I involuntarily wet my self immediately before the ‘discipline’. What a fine way to treat small defenseless children. I was a bed-wetter until around 17 years old. So, must be plenty of psychological issues buried away. My poor mother was the one to take me to the doctors/specialists about the bed-wetting, but lo, the cause was probably there in the house.
Now I understand why my parents had such a negative attitude towards our education, thanks to the info from posters of the infamous 1969 Awake magazine about careers and education. If I remember correctly, I started Secondary School (UK) in 1969, my parents even got me excused from doing any homework at the time, so unfortunately I didn’t pursue any goals and drifted along. I was interested in things scientific, and now looking back, would have loved to have pursued astronomy or geology or meteorology, or similar. Thank you WTBTS.
I educated both my sons to university level. This was post 1995, when education-bashing eased up, but when they (WT) began to tighten up again, I hung onto the more liberal view.
Currently I’m an inactive (ughh, what a stupid term) JW, staying around for family reasons. But I’m free, free of the fear of thinking for myself; now seeing things in a very different light. I can’t remember exactly the first ‘apostate’ site I visited, but a couple of years ago I was reading Alan Feurbacher’s blog and some other stuff, more recently Randy Watters’ freeminds, and even more recently JWN. I didn’t know apostates were supposed to be so funny! Ha. Going to meetings just means a two hour break from the house, so I just sit there and switch off. The last elder to bug me for a field service slip was answered thus: “well I don’t have any field service to report brother (pause), but if you really want, I can give you a slip with zeros in all the columns”, I know, I was being a bit of a smart ass. So thanks to all posters for helping to free my mind.
Oh, about the name, when I saw Anthony Morris III, in print in the publications, I used to think “you pretentious SOB”, especially in view of the second major reason for not celebrating birthdays i.e. not drawing undue attention to the individual, or giving honor. I don’t think they print his handle any more. Just making fun really.