“Have you heard the good news?” I said to the woman in a muumuu, looking confused behind her screen door. “The good news of the Kingdom?”
This was on a Saturday or Sunday many moons ago, when Blockbuster and Kmart were still suburban kings. If I was lucky, the door would slam in my face and I would be relieved from kid proselytizing until the next stop. If I was unlucky, I would be invited in and forced to carry on a conversation with the other adults accompanying us in whatever musty living room we found ourselves in.
Of the facts that surprise people most about me is my brief but traumatic upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness. My parents made my sister and I attend twice weekly meetings, plus door-to-door ministry, until I was about 11, when they separated and my mom mercifully left the church on her own volition. “It wasn’t the truth,” I remember her saying about the faith that members commonly refer to as “The Truth.”
The older I get, the harder it is to remember much of what JWs believe anymore. Relatives and childhood friends swiftly cut us off as we drifted further and further away, back into mainstream society. I had my first *real* birthday party when I was 16 — mom rented a limo out of guilt, I think, for the prior 15 birthdays that went unacknowledged. Luckily, I never had to worry about voting when I turned 18, something JWs also prohibit members from doing. I think the only real lasting influence of the church was always feeling like an outsider.
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