The isolation of public school
It’s funny how isolated I felt as a kid in school. I’ve talked to several people I went to school with in recent years and they really didn’t see me as such an outcast, but mind you they didn’t see me anywhere but school. I don’t know if it was harder in grade school or later years, they each had their own “perks.”
In grade school there are the parties, the sweet “worldly” parties with all their candy and fun. I was fortunate, most of the time my mom would take me out of school since I wasn’t allowed to participate in these parties, the alternative was usually to sit in the cafeteria and do some schoolwork. I only remember one time I had to sit in the cafeteria, our grade school was open(no walls) so we could hear the kids having fun while a handful of us “kept free from the worldly influence” in the cafeteria. The hardest part was when my classmates would ask why I didn’t celebrate any holidays or salute the flag and I had to plaster on a smile and explain. We were prepped for this, all Jehovah’s Witness children have a canned response to try and make the general public see that we are not missing out. Questioning this shows a lack of faith, so you just don’t. We have a response for everything, Birthdays, Christmas (double whammy, it’s a birthday too), Valentine’s Day and we were told why we didn’t celebrate them and that was that. Saluting the flag was another time we stood out. I always stood up out of respect, but some felt that was wrong and sat. We just stood there during the pledge and the National Anthem. Apparently the flag was a false God and we couldn’t love our country. I was an exemplary youth at this point.
High school and Junior High don’t focus so much on holidays and class parties so that was a nice break, but it brought other issues. At the time, joining the band or playing sports were extracurricular activities that took away from your worship and highly discouraged. Going to games and pep rallies were not allowed, so now there is a handful of us that sit in the school library and wait for the pep rally to end. I never attended a pep rally, even though I attended some games in high school, even took some “worldly” school mates with me and just kept my mouth shut. One of the ladies at the hall had a son that played football at my school, everyone always felt sorry for her because she had this worldly son that was going to be destroyed at Armageddon. Since Armageddon was going to happen any day now, college was also frowned upon. Why go to college? Women should want to grow up and spend all their time knocking on doors converting others and men should support their families and their organization.
I joined FBLA, was in the Honor Society for a while and FHA. All of these extracurricular activities were discouraged, we even had brochures about the bad influence of these things. Really, I was only in those clubs because my senior year I wanted some clubs beside my name. I can’t remember the name of the brochure, but I remember reading it and it was reasonable at the time. None of these things seemed crazy or out of the ordinary at the time.
Grade school didn’t have many issues with boys, other than kiss chase. I only remember getting chased once, he didn’t catch me, so I was still “clean” in God’s eyes. High school was a little more difficult, when you don’t cuss and everyone knows you’re a virgin, some people like to harass and embarrass you because it’s so easy. Jehovah’s Witnesses only date to marry, so there is no casual dating and especially no dating “worldly” boys. My parents had no idea how hard that was for me, I held fast to my faith, but it was really difficult. I ended up going to the extreme and staying away from the boys I liked. When I was asked out, I would say no, even when I wanted to go, I didn’t socialize with anyone outside of school that wasn’t a Jehovah’s Witness to keep myself “clean from worldly influence.” There was a boy I knew in Tennessee that was God approved, so I wrote him casual letters and he wrote me once or twice, that made it easier, he was real and I could tell people I wanted to marry him some day. Fact of the matter was he was older and I was just a little kid his mother made him humor, she bought me a card or two and made him write in it. I’m still grateful, it made my life easier.
Sandy,
I am loving your blog! very inspirational….very deep…..i love it!