Convention “Highlights”

Muddy Waters

Taking a walk down Memory Lane at those looooonnnnngg, tedious conventions...

(Boy, they weren’t kidding when they spoke about being long-suffering and having endurance!)

But what were some of your convention highlights, or lowlights, from back in the day?

...

I remember:

- taking endless notes

- shifting uncomfortably constantly

- walking aimlessly around the coliseum till you spotted somebody you knew and then it was a big deal to say hello and find out where they were sitting so you could resume walking aimlessly around again...

pale.emperor

Oh man.

I never actually took notes. There was nothing said that was new or worth writing down. I can remember every convention being very boring. And the only memories i have are not of the talks but of the dramas and the people i'd speak to in the breaks.

waton

I remember taking at least one note, the address (false) of the sister I had just met, and married later. Note taking to be highlighted.

Bruisedandbleeding12

.......hmmmm......highlights........

punkofnice

I took notes. When I reviewed them I realised the talks weren't really saying anything other than working for the corporation's interests. I saw random scriptures used to make a facile point or other.

When I asked my family what they took away from the a$$emb£y, I got blank looks.

What utter nonsense the CON-ventions and a$$emb£ies were.

Later on, I just used the a$$emb£ies to nap.

DesirousOfChange

The one highlight of the conventions that I recall most often was meeting the JW girl who would become my wife.

sir82

Back a few, er, decades ago, I always worked with the food department.

Back before the "standardized" menus, there was a lot more variety in the menu from year to year.

One year, the overseer had, not one, but two (two!) "brilliant" ideas:

-- Let's serve hamburgers! Each one wrapped completely in foil

-- Let's send some poor schlub (me!) walking around the seats, carrying a Styrofoam cooler with 40 or 50 burgers, offering them to whoever had enough "food tickets" to buy one

Unfortunately, that overseer was not adept at the logistics of burger storage. The top couple of rows of burgers were fine. But the bottom couple of rows were swimming, literally submerged, in all the grease that had escaped from the 40-50 burgers that were bouncing around in there.

I distinctly remember dipping my hand into the lukewarm grease to pull out a dripping foil-wrapped burger to offer some poor schmuck who (of course) didn't look into the cooler prior to placing his "order".

God only knows what they thought when they peeled back the foil to reveal the oil-sopped burger & bun inside. I didn't stick around to find out.

Funchback

I nodded my head in agreement to everything... Oh, wait, no...I was actually dozing and my head was simply bobbing up and down.

Then, each time the crowd clapped, I would suddenly waken and then seamlessly joined in without missing a beat.

Phoebe

Those food trays we had back in the 60s, with separate compartments for your food. I loved them.

Volunteering in the food department. I spent one entire convention slicing tomatoes for sandwiches, never heard a word of the talks! I loved working in the food dept.

Making friends - it was our one opportunity to make new friends. Months of planning went into convention outfits so we'd look our best. We'd come home with loads of addresses of new friends to write to. The convention was the highlight of our social calendar!

I don't ever remember taking notes! When I got older and had kids, conventions were a ordeal. Trying to cope with two young children and a newborn in a freezing cold UK football stadium was no fun. Sitting on hard seats for hours. I remember thinking why are we putting ourselves through this? Sometimes it was so cold older people would get hypothermia. We would say 'the America brothers wouldn't put up with this'

undercover