Picture it: Alabama, the early eighties.
A young JW child (author of this blog) goes to the bible study on Tuesday evening, per usual, with his family. The highlight of going to the bible study is playing with his best friend afterwards and eating so many crabapples from the tree out front that he gets a stomachache. The world is innocent and full of life and wonder. But on this particular evening, the air is heavy with something-- anxiety? worry? impending doom?...
The children are excused to play while the adults are cloistered in a room together, speaking in hushed tones. Something's up.
The ride home is quiet. Mom and dad are worried about something. Not so unusual-- they often worried about a lot of things, not the least of which was the fact that Armageddon could come along at any moment and wipe us all out if we weren't the good JWs we should be. But tonight was different. Whatever they talked about with the other adults is weighing heavily on them.
When we get home, we have a "family conference." These, too, are commonplace. The kids are sat down in the living room, ages 2, 7 and 12, and are subjected to at least two hours of JW indoctrination regarding such topics as "worldly children" we shouldn't associate with or "smearing Jehovah's name" at the Kingdom Hall (code for "the next time you knock down an entire row of seats in front of the elders or dare another child to partake of the emblems, you won't be able to sit down for a week..."). This night's meeting, though, was short.
Mom and dad solemnly tell us about a little girl, not unlike us, whose JW parents put up smurf wallpaper in her bedroom. At some point during the night, Satan and/or his demons possessed the smurfs on the wallpaper, jumped off the wall, and started playing her. Her parents were naturally horrified upon discovering this and promptly tore the wallpaper off the walls.
Tonight E.T. would burn alongside a smurf comforter and smurf curtains. Armageddon had arrived, if only for a child's toys and room furnishings.
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