funny times growing up a witness

by strymeckirules 26 Replies latest jw experiences

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  strymeckirules

  it's halarious when only one section trys to start a clap and it fizzles and dies. i always wondered who did that. the zealous or the jokers? now i know.

  or when the people start to clap when the speaker isn't finished

  or when the people clap after last prayer. hooray!

  my parents were found by good old fashioned door to door.

  so they bought it hook line and sinker.

  so they were ultra zealous and perfect. too bad they had me. i'm human.

  i was 8-10 and there was a boy my age in our congregation named carlos. i wanted to be friends cause i could sense he had freedoms i didn't and he was nice.

  so at the meetings were would play and such and all was good.

  but my parents took me aside one day(for programming) and told me they didn't want me to be such good friends with carlos. i ask "why?" of course.

  "because he is BAD ASSOCIATION."(is that one trademarked yet?)

  this didn't make sense to me. he was a jdub. i was jdub. we go to same kindom hall. does not compute in 8-10 year old brain. but it was a rule.

  so eventually at one meeting he wants to hang out or he invites me over for a visit. and i proceed to tell him that he's BAD ASSOCIATION.

  he's as dumbfounded as i am. i tell him my parents said so. there is nothing i can do. case closed. we part ways and that was the end of it.

  later that night at home after the meeting, my parents got a call from carlos's father. it seems that he was offended at my parents for dubbing his son and in effect his family and himself, BAD ASSOCIATION. he was yelling. how would you feel if my dad said that about you?

  my father is trying to explain what i ment when i told his son that he was a devil child. foot in mouth big time. eventually he gets off the phone and tells mom the situation,(i'm sure she already had figured it out ) and they proceed to attempt to re-program me.

  "son, not everything we say in the family house should be said outside this house." he told me whatever reasons he had for making his judgement, like their family is late to the meetings or they don't all come or don't come at all. THEY HAD FIVE YOUNG KIDS! no excuse, judgement stands. it's my fault.

  whatever. carlos knew my parents were crazy so he never blamed me and my dad got disicplined. HA!

  then some other time around the same age....

  terry - handicapped lady in our hall. got shot accidently by her brother and she can't walk. but she has a tricked our trans am that's fitted for her to drive it. she was probably 25-30 and single with cats.

  she babysitted us lots and mom helped her out with stuff, it was alright. she made horrible eggplant though. and she forced us to eat it and we all cried and that sucked.

  anyways, one day in service my mom is talking with the other hens in service, regular gossip stuff. my mom says something about terry "being in the marrying mood." that sounded interesting to me so it stuck. ah oh.

  i'm at terrys' one day with my bro and sis and we are all sitting around the kitchen table and just for comversation i ask terry "so, you're in the marring mood, huh?"

  she chokes on her drink and asks "pardon me?"

  "ya my mom told us you were in the marrying mood. you want to get married!"

  she is flabbergasted. i remember that now, i didn't then. she is sputtering trying to get more information out of me about what I KNOW about what's been said about her behind her back.

  later on, once again my parents pull me aside and tell me i'm not supposed to repeat the things i hear when they are ridiculing and gossiping about others.

  i don't remember her much longer after that. she might have quit studying because of that.

  next post - some ways to amuse yourself in you seat as you fight the power of boredom.(i like the spit story. kids are awesome)
• 

  sabastious

  I would try to practice a presentation with my little brother as the householder but he wouldn't let me finish and keep yelling, "Get off my property!"

  -Sab
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  serenitynow!

  or when the people clap after last prayer. hooray!

  Yeah why did that start? I remember my mom was very much against it. She thought clapping after a prayer was not right.
• 

  life is to short

  This thread is really funny but sad. The meetings are so hard on children. Sitting still for two hours was so horrible.

  Welcome strymeckirules great first post.

  LITS
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  MrFreeze

  Frankly the stupid stuff that kids do at the hall is a lot more entertaining than what's going on on the platform.
• 

  strymeckirules

  SweetBabyCheezits- you have to have more stories. concentrate!! did you bring the utensil just to "show it" to get the laugh? that's great. too bad you got caught.

  all the halls i have been to have neat ways to distract me from programming.

  the chairs - the material they used on the chairs. it usually had a repeating pattern in it. remember those 3-d pictures from the 90's that you'd have to cross your eyes to see the picture? well, you could do that with the chairs in the hall. if you crossed or unfocused your eyes, the pattern would cross into itself and become "3d" ish. i hope this makes sense to you. the carpet would do the same sometimes. and it they had that wooden latice behind the podium on the stage that would do it too.

  also during the prayers, i would pry the plastic caps of the tops of the metal chair and try to pull the plugs out of the wooden chairs.

  also during prayers i would also picture everyone with a "prayer meter" over thier heads in "prayer closed eye land". if you payed really good attention to the prayer, your meter would shoot sky high up to heaven, but the people opening their eyes and looking around, thier meters were low and a bad color. i made this up and during the prayers i would try to focus on my meter to make it get up to god and everyone elses were fluctuating. did any one else do this? wierd.

  try to balance your song book on the chair in front of you during the prayer. then your bro knocks it down and you cause a fuss.

  how many ways have you learned how to sleep in a chair? head on hand on the arm rest was great. head up eyes closed, head nodding and head remaining nodded after fight had gave up. elbow on knees hand holding up head is another great one. the floor is the best but i wasn't allowed anymore at about 8years, but my bro still could and that made me jealous. you could sleep so good on the floor. right through the last song and bang! run around the hall until hometime! sometimes you even got a blanket and a drink. lucky.

  or i used to count all the ceiliing tiles or lights.

  or count all the different hair colors. or stare through the clear roaming mike stick to see the distorted image.

  or in a magazine, i would look for god's secret code, that only i would find. i would take a paper and put it over the watchtower page. then i would blank off everything but the first letters of all the lines in the column row, right beside the margin. i would check if they spelt anything. they never did. but i watched for it. something was odd about those mags...

  later on in life i got into music. learned to play guitar and drum. at the meetings to kill time, i would play back my favorite albums by memory, trying to remember all the parts so it took all my concentration. me knees and jawbone would give me awy to my parents cause i'd start tapping my feet to the beat or clicking my teeth in my closed mouth to the beat. an album was about an hour so if i could do two albums, the meeting was over!! it worked great to avoid programming.

  another great way to kill time at the meetings is to read the bible. when a speaker would turn us to a scripture, i would read the chapter it was taken from, ignoring the rest of the talk and what the speaker had to say. sometime i would finish the book i was reading, like 20 minute of not paying any attention to the talks! and i never got in trouble cause i was reading the bible. parents would not stop me. neat side effect, i got context al of a sudden. no more bull twisting scriptures. and i learned what the book said.(tainted jdub edition though)

  the second school to the hall i went to as a kid, it had old bound volumes of early watchtowers and awakes. in the first few pages of the books, it showed a picture or charlie russel. and as the books were for different years, there were different photos of him getting older. so us young ones(8-12) after the meeting would pull out these books and go to those pictures and watch the amazing get old fast man. there were about 7-8 different pics and we liked watching him get older and older and older.... we had no clue. wonder if anyone else noticed?
• 

  PublishingCult

  "pretend to try to comment all night but get missed cause you hesistate a moment too long to raise your hand. makes you look zealous."

  LOL, yes, that was me.

  As teenagers, my cousin and I would sit together during meetings and communicate by pointing to words in the Bible and the WT magazine to form sentences. We'd end up shaking like a couple of jello molds trying to stifle laughter. Oh, the looks we got from other JW's :P