Meeting Survival Guide – Games we play
One doesn't grow up religiously attending '5 meetings a week™' without developing a strategy for survival. Mine started at about ten years of age and gradually grew more sophisticated as the years assemblies™ rolled by. It started innocently enough with me being equipped with a notebook and pen with which I stated drawing caricatures of the speaker™, Congregation Servant™, theocratic ministry school servant™ and everyone else including the bible characters and paradise visions we were supposedly 'studying™'
Other strategies included:
Speed Scripture:
This is usually the first game learned as a JW. How fast can you look up a scripture when 'requested from the platform™'? This can get very competitive especially among young males with many a New World Translation ending up with shredded and sticky taped pages. One soon learns the handicap of the old hard cover green bibles and up grades to a nice bendy deluxe version.
Speed scripture ready reckoner : 2 seconds – good
: 1 second – excellent
: instant open to correct page – bingo! we have a winner
Song Memory:
Memorise the songs and sing with no songbook (confuses the buggery out of lesser mortals. In 20 years I only managed to learn three complete songs “we're Jehovah's witnesses”, “from house to house” and mmm ...what was #63 in the old pink songbook?
Song Demon:
Instead of moving on to the second verse repeat the first very loudly. A favourite of my pioneer partner and I when visiting small country congregations. The idea is to get those around you changing and repeating it too. Once we turned got the whole congregation (ah little victories).
Hall Bondage:
Is the sister in front wearing a dress with a big pink bow? Why not carefully untie it and re-tie her to her chair. Caution: I advise go to the dunny before she stands for the final song – an upset tearful girl with a torn dress is not for the faint hearted.
Wake up Gumby:
Brother in front dozing off during the 'Bible study with the aid of the watchtower?™' Lean forward and raise your arm to look like it's his. With any luck the microphone will soon be headed his way. (my pioneer partner and I once had the study conductor in fits with this tactic – Richard Best was a very serious man and couldn't work out which of us really had our hand, especially when we started having a pretend fight. In the end he got the giggles and had to excuse himself for a sobering drink of water.)
Evil Eye:
OK your friend is giving a talk™ tonight. Why not sit front and centre and during his talk start rolling your eyes, pulling faces, crosseyes etc... Did this to a young bro to such good effect he could hardly go on for nervous giggling. Glen Brown would get up and carry on like a baptist holy roller, thumping the podium™ etc.. but this trick slowed him down lol.
Bible Swap:
Best at assemblies™. While everyone is away during the break, swap all the bibles and song books about. Kick back and enjoy the confusion at the beginning of the next session (not so easy now that everyone eats where they sit).
A new one I saw referenced here is copied from the business world and called *BS bingo.
Of couse the most common strategy was to kick back and think about sex
unclebruce
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So what about you? How did you cope with the hours of tedium and boredom?