My brain had to have checked out for the duration of the meeting, awakened only by the beginning of the Kingdom Melodies tape clanging in my ears, signaling the end of yet another mind-numbing indoctrination session and, quite possibly, another day without the big "A" raining down upon me.
For the times when I did try to stay awake and coherent, there were things I could do to occupy my time:
Count the number of letters in the scripture above the lectern and come up with a pattern for them set to a kingdom melody.
Count the holes in the ceiling tiles.
Go pee.
Make up new lyrics to the kingdom melodies ("To whom do we belong? We be-long to King Kong...")
Stare at the old people in the kingdom hall and imagine what they'd look like growing younger in the new system.
Design my house, post-Armageddon.
Try to figure out where, if it were in the NWT, the word "homosexual" would go in the index and which two words had the "misfortune" of bracketing it.
Once, we had an annointed sister in our congregation. This was in the 80s, and she had to have been older than dirt even then, and sadly her mind was gone. She'd raise her hand to comment and we never knew if what she said would be gems of wisdom or something completely inappropriate. Many times she'd simply be tattling on what some youngster was doing wrong. Her hand goes up, everyone draws a tentative breath, she gets called on, and the heaven-bound says: "This kid over here has his finger up his nose, and this one's playing with his shoe." That was our "new light" for the day. But sadly, that's as exciting as it got, unless of course someone had been d/f or disassociated. Why didn't the elders give us all the juicy details? That might have filled some seats on Thursday night.
And the WT discussion? Oh. My. Sweet. Heavenly. Hay-Seuss. I could never figure out why a study that took me approx. 5-10 minutes to prepare for took a solid hour of discussion (well, actually, we know its purpose is to keep pounding JW doctrine into submissive minds).
And what exactly was the point of the Theocratic Ministry School aside from embarrassing the participants with critiques, FROM THE PODIUM, in front of the entire congregation? Oh I can't tell you how many times I just wanted to tilt to one side in my seat and let one rip right in the middle of it.
And is air conditioning against the bylaws of the elder manual? Plug in an oscillating fan.
Of course, the best thing about the meeting was LEAVING! Getting out was an obstacle course. Too many people to talk to... "Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jehovah, Watchtower, Armageddon. Okay great. Have a great day. See you in F/S."
Really makes me appreciate Tuesday evenings, Thursday evenings, Saturday mornings, Saturday afternoons, Sunday mornings and Sunday afternoons a whole lot more now.
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