Iown Mylife said:
DEPRESSING - everything else, including getting ready for meetings, studying for meetings, working up talks, giving talks, assemblies, waiting in line for the toilet at assemblies while smelling the stink, getting picnic lunch ready for assemblies, eating the lunch and getting food all over myself, trying to drink coffee with a thermos, lugging all that stuff in from the car and trying to find a seat, sitting for hours and struggling with yawning, trying to get back to the car through the crowds and burning up in the heat, waiting to get out of the parking lot, jeez I hated it all, felt guilty for hating it. It is a sickening mess, I don't know what all they do now but major discomfort is the overriding memory.
That is funny to read but awful to experience.
We had our summer assemblies at a horse track in Cicero,IL in the 1970'S through early 1980's. The assemblies were always in early July ( where it was always smoking hot outside and the smell of the horse barns that were a couple of hundred feet away). Nothing better than smelling horse crap in hot July weather,sitting in the blazing sun outside with a suit and tie listening to boring talks for 3-4 days.
The parking lots were always full early in the morning. You would have to walk a long distance to enter the horse track. Then,you would try to find a seat in a small section where it was enclosed with air-conditioning. NO LUCK.Those were already taken early in the morning by the higher ups and their families. You had no choice but to sit in partial shade or in full sun outside for 8 hours while your brain was being fried from the hot sun hoping you wouldn't suffer from heat stroke.
The lunch period lasted for 1.5 hours where it was too hot, crowded and suffered pain from being hit in the legs by baby strollers.
After lunch, you would doze off or suffer heat stroke while members from the Bethel family would come out from their air-conditioned suite with a brother holding an umbrella over his head ( you don't want them to suffer from the summer heat) and giving his boring and monotone talk while having shade from the podium for the 1 hour talk. Then the concluding prayer would last 15 minutes while you wish you died from sun stroke. After the prayer, it would take at least an hour to leave the parking lot.
