Posted by Vicki J. [Felicity] on November 25, 1999 at 17:59:29 {yaNwUlwC5cFFrEmGrZRUOJmDKI0QM2}:
Hi folks, I've found this book very amusing - it's written by an Aussie ex witness, and her turn of phrase and observational skills have had me laughing most of the way thru the book.
I'll give you a little example: Chapt. 2. The Show Must Go On.
'Do not forsake the gathering together of yourselves as some have the custom........' These words were a direction to the early Christians but once again they were applied to us. They were taken with such seriousness that if one of the members missed a 'feast of spiritual food' arranged for their benefit, they would be visited and 'encouraged', for their own benefit, to attend the neaxt 'feast'.
This differed somewhat from my perception of the 'meetings'. These Bible lectures were about as interesting to an infant or toddler as watching paint dry on a blank wall.......
If torture didn't manage to kill you, then God would have the awful task of finishing you off. To be saved from a fate worse than death it was necessary to receive his directions three times a week at the assigned meeting place... So twice a week, I was brought along, plopped on a rug on the floor and expected to stay there for two and a half hours without making a sound. My parents, particularly Mum, were determined to show everyone what ideal children they could raise, so if I uttered a noise it was straight outside for a hiding.
Forturnately I was a fat, placid baby, who enjoyed navel gazing, and I certainly had a lot to gaze at. Being born with an umbilical hernia had left me with a belly button that protruded nearly two inches from my tummy, until an operation was performed when I was two. One thing I did learn quickly from the meetings was that I did not have a taste for being whacked on the bottom.
My brother, born a year after me, felt the same but had a unique method of revenge. He had been born with a liver impariment and was nick-named 'Spewy Louey'. He had tremendous range and unpredictablity. Mum and Dad would be nicely dressed in their Sunday best, my brother and myself in our finery, sitting in the car while the engine was warming when my brother would take aim and, with all the force his pancreas could muster, begin. Before he was finished everyone within a three-metre radius would be sticky and smelling like a century old cheese factory.
Even so, he was as loath as I to be spanked, so it was not until the birth of their third child, Keith, who had been born with an astonishing capacity for pain and a will that seemed inappropriate for his size, that Mum and Dad found they cound not always win over their offspring. They tried very hard to make him understand that the C.W.A hall represented God's meeting place but to this boy it was nothing more than a dingy hall he hated. In his own way he tried to make our parents undersand that he did NOT like being still, not for a moment.
It was a stalemate. Neither side would back down so it became civil war. Keith, on seeing the hall that represented things bad, opened his mouth and began to bellow. Mum's mouth would fix into a line and she showed Keith her hand. He roared. She slapped harder. By the time Dad was parking the car outside the hall, everyone knew we had arrived.
This pattern continued throughout the Bible study, with Mum dashing outside with him for another round until either Mum or Keith became too weary. This usually took two hours by which time Kieth had fallen into a coma and mum sat with a glazed expression in her eyes and her mouth sunk as low as she did into her chair.
At the end of the meeting they would lift their son as gingerly as possible, but he always awoke with startled eyes, and began shrieking in sheer terror. He would still be going well after the long drive home, and continued late into the night."
Bring back memories to anyone...everyone?????
Marilyn