Well, that may be hyperbole. I do remember a school assembly in junior school where a yo-yo troupe came in and tried to sell all the kids expensive yo-yos. I’m not sure how or why that happened but it did and no one can tell me otherwise.
I was in the coffee shop last week. A woman was trying to explain to her friends about the Harvest Festival song. She recited the first two lines
Cauliflowers Fluffy and cabbages green.
Strawberries are sweeter than any I’ve seen.
She was asking around the place, trying to find out if anyone else remembered singing this song in assembly. Most people did. I didn’t.
My first assumption was that my school didn’t do this song, but I do remember Harvest Festival being a thing, and I went to a run-of-the-mill public school in Kent, it sounds like the sort of shit you’d expect. But then I realised; fluffy cauliflowers, sweet strawberries, – hang about. This all sounds far too nice for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
One Google search later and my suspicions were confirmed. Due to its pagan origins, absence of God and the fact it may be mistaken for a good time, the Witnesses don’t participate in Harvest Festival. Not the celebration itself anyway. I do, however, remember bringing dusty tins of chickpeas to school to donate, but I suppose it would be a pretty bad look to refuse to help feed the needy. Almost as bad a look as letting thousands needing blood transfusions die for doctrinal reasons, only to subsequently change said doctrine when facing legal pressure from the Norwegian courts. But hey ho.
Wednesday mornings at my junior school were reserved for singing hymns in assembly. So, every Wednesday for 4 years was spent in the school library with fellow JW kids (and one Japanese boy whose parents didn’t want religion mixed with education, which seems fair enough I guess). He and the oldest JW boy would recite episodes of Spongebob Squarepants at each other, taking lines in turn. I remember being so impressed that I went and learned the episode Bubble Boy front to back just to impress them.
Now, in the nicest possible way (and I truly mean that), when a sect preys on the vulnerable, lonely, desperate and weird, the children born into said sect turn out, well, strange. And these were the ones who were allowed to attend school. Thanks to the organisation’s encouragement to ‘remain no part of the world’ plus a fear of ‘worldly influence’ a large culture of home-schooling still unfortunately prevails within the Witnesses. Chances are if you had a JW kid in your school, as strange as they were, they were the most normal and well-adjusted in their congregation.
There were between 5-10 Jehovah’s Witnesses in my school, so the mums arranged a rota in which they took turns babysitting the group in the school library or IT room every Wednesday. I assume the school refused to provide a staff member to sit and watch a collection of junior cult members.
These babysitting sessions would look one of three ways; printed out JW themed activity sheets (think wordsearches with phrases like ‘Ministry’ and ‘Bethel’, colour in Job’s seeping boils, etc). If we were lucky, we’d get to watch a Watchtower animated video, either Noah: He Walked with God or David: He Trusted in God, both I ended up seeing about 20 times each. Or sometimes we’d get lucky and the mum wouldn’t bring in anything, and me and my friend would just end up looking at Where’s Wally or Dr Seuss books for 45 minutes until we could go to class.
This sort of othering happens every single day as a Jehovah’s Witness child. From as young as I could remember it was on oneself to refuse a classmates’ birthday sweets, to distribute Memorial invites to teachers and classmates when that rolled around, or taking yourself out to sit in the corridor when the rest of the class were treated to a viewing of the Polar Express on the last day of the year.
I remember distinctly inviting my Year One teacher, Ms Philpot, for a Bible Study at my house. It must’ve been the first time I found out the concept of ‘popping in for a cup of tea’ as that is what she said she may do, likely to let me, a six-year-old preacher, down gently. I spent about an hour on a Saturday afternoon keeping an eye on the window, ensuring my mum had tea and thinking about how I could convert my teacher. She obviously didn’t fancy it. I was disappointed beyond belief.
This wasn’t a matter of giving out magazine; it was life and death. Without intervention my teacher would die violently, alongside my classmates, at Armageddon.
I used to think about my classroom in rubble and me standing alone; vindicated and alive. My parents taught me that Jehovah could see peoples’ ‘heart condition’, and that some non-Witnesses would be saved or resurrected if He judged them to be good. I used to sit and wonder which is my classmates had a good heart and which one of them would become one with the scorched earth.
With all that being said; would it surprise you to learn that I was an anxious child?
When it was my mums turn to babysit the Wednesday rabble, I would make myself sick with dread when she went to leave. More often than not, I would end up getting myself in such a state that the school nurse would just give up and let me go home with her.
Was there, maybe, a link between the fear I felt, and the earnest belief in an imminent doomsday instilled in me from the moment I could comprehend ideas? My therapist things so, my mother less so.
I know one thing for sure. If Armageddon did come on that Wednesday afternoon, I’d much rather have been at home with my mum, than having to watch Jehovah turn Ms Philpot to a pile ash and bone.
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