Part 1:
It's a long story really. There are many reasons I quit the Jdubs. I guess what it boiled down to is that I finally had to admit that a lot of it just didn't make sense and certainly wasn't making me happy. For example, it is very depressing to walk around in life thinking that everyone you meet willl be destroyed (gotta love that word they use). I was only 9 years old when my mother decided to join them. She was one of those who got really (fanatically) into it right from the start.. you know, instantly turn their back on everyone and everything that they've ever known. Naturally, all of us kids (there were 4 of us at that time) had no say in the matter, this was our new religion and way of life - LIKE IT OR NOT! Me and my older sister were in a Catholic school at the time. My mother started going to meetings in June 1976 . I still remember walking into a very hot Vet Stadium that summer and seeing all the flowers on the field and the huge white letters in a semi-circle spelling out "1976 District Convention of Jehovah's Witness". I had been to that stadiuim a few times already for Phillies games, so it felt really strange to me being there for "church". I spent most of the time just trying to beat the heat and boredom by imaging I was Mike Schmidt or Greg Luzinski standing at the plate waiting for pitches to hit over the fence. Of course, as the years went by, girl watching would become me and my friends source of entertainment for those 4 long grueling days every year. Anyway, by the end of that summer my sister and I would be registered at the township public school (catholic school was now forbidden of course). God, thinking back now I remember feeling like a such a pawn just shoved here and there on anyones whim. ( I remember screaming silently in my head - "HEY - WHAT ABOUT WHAT I WANT - I LIKE MY SCHOOL, MY FRIENDS, MY LIFE!!!!) I say I protested things silently because open dissent was not tolerated in our house - both parents were dictators. I guess I took the silent submissive role because I saw where the vocal protest got you. I observed countless times how they would treat my older sister everytime she opened her mouth to give a different opinion or stick up for one of us. They always resorted to visciously calling her names (their own daughter!) like, "crazy", "Liar", "instigator", "always the rebellious one", "stubborn", "Fat", "lazy", "stirring up trouble again..",etc,etc. Their inhumane treatment of her is another very long story that saddens me very deeply. The neglect and abuse all of us suffered at the hands of my father was always being watched on the sidelines by my dutiful christian anointed full time pioneer mother. That's right, within 4 years she would become a Full time Pioneer, and one of the 144,000 anointed, and add child numBer 5 to the family, all this while never working a single day for a real wage!
Part 2 will follow...