Some Personal Anecdotes

Doug Checketts (aka Farkel)

1. My mother once told me about a man who was in need of food and shelter. He approached a local congregation and told the brothers that he was a Witness from another state. They questioned him about it. He told them that he was from such and such "Company". The brothers immediately knew he had been out of touch with Jehovah's Witnesses for years, since the word "Company" had been replaced with "Congregation". Needless to say, they turned his requests down, and left him homeless.

Moral: Should you ever need help from the Witnesses, make sure you are current on your homework.

2. My uncle was kinda crazy. Not really DANGEROUS crazy, just, well, GOOFY crazy. He liked to dress in women's clothes and stuff like that. Mom said he was demonized. He gave me a metronome to help me keep time while I practiced the piano. I had the metronome for years. After I had moved away from home to another state about 1,000 miles away, my mother determined from a simple phone conversation with me that something was very wrong with me. She also determined that the probable cause was that metronome, which of course, had to be possessed by demons. She told me that if I destroyed the metronome that I would not have any more problems. I told her that I didn't HAVE any problems to begin with, and if the metronome was, in fact, demonized then why did it take those bad old demons nearly 10 years to start messing around with me?

Moral: If you have problems, then some of your stuff is probably demonized. Sell the stuff at a garage sale, and let someone else deal with the demons.

3. At one of the meetings I attended, a woman passed out and went into convulsions. A very old and respected anointed couple jumped into action. The woman started to rub her feet and the old man tried to get the patient to eat garlic! No one dared intervene, since this couple were not only anointed, but were "off-campus" active Bethelites. Surely, THEY knew what to do. The patient's condition worsened. Someone called a relative. The relative said, "You FOOLS! She is a diabetic! Get some sugar in her system STAT!" The old couple had to be literally pulled off this unfortunate woman before others could give her the proper assistance.

Moral: If you're gonna die in a Kingdom Hall, it's best not to have bad breath when you do it.

4. One day I was out in Service, and, while waiting for a householder to answer the door, I just happened to glance at the laundry room. A woman clad in a very short nightie (and nothing else) had bent over to put her clothes in the wash. Well, instead of just glancing, I proceeded to do what any healthy 21 year old male would do: I gawked. I was unaware that while I was doing my gawking, the householder had opened the door and she was noticing me noticing what I was noticing. She put me on notice that I wasn't much of a Christian!

Moral: If you're a 21 year old male who's gotta go out in the Service, try to find more apartment buildings with laundry rooms.

5. I was attending a public talk which was given by a brother whom everyone liked. He started out the talk by announcing that just hours earlier, Marilyn Monroe had committed suicide. How he ever worked that story into the theme of his talk, I can't recall, but he did. I never heard a word of the talk after that. The great love of my life was gone.

Moral: Come to the Public Talk if you want to keep up on current events.

6. One of the great hoots I had as a kid was eagerly awaiting for a certain woman in the Congregation to raise her hand in response to a question. No matter what the question was, she always had a way of inserting her favorite word as part of the answer to the question: fornification. Yup, you read that right! Fornification. It didn't matter if the subject matter was Genesis chapter 1 or the Last Supper, she had this incredible knack of somehow finding a way to discuss the sin of fornification.

Moral: When in doubt about which Kingdom Hall to attend, always chose an "R" rated one if you can.

7. When I was 12 years old, the "Twist" was the new dance rage. Of course, the Watchtower Society put the kabosh on that. My mother told me that the Twist was an erotic dance and I was not allowed to dance it at school. She did NOT, however, tell me I could not do the dance by myself it in my closet with the door closed, which is exactly what I did.

Moral: If you are a Witness and want to learn to dance, make sure you find a big closet.

8. When the Watchtower came out strongly discouraging Witnesses to not play the game of chess, because it was a "war" game, I promptly brushed up on my skills and played every non-Witness I could find. To the best of my knowledge, no one died as a result. In fact, no one was even wounded in action!

Moral: Before buying a board game for your child, submit it for review and attempt to obtain the "Watchtower House of Approval" stamp.

9. One night, (when I was a child) all Congregation "officials" were attending some secret meeting, so a woman was chosen to conduct the meeting. Witnesses require a woman to wear a head covering in such situations. The attendees looked everywhere to find a hat, but none was to be found. She ended up conducting the meeting with a towel over her head!

Moral: Where is Allen Funt when you need him?

10. I remember this woman, who in preparing for the Watchtower study, used to underline EVERY LINE in EVERY PARAGRAPH. Whenever she would answer a question, she would read the entire paragraph! I swear I am not making this up!

Moral: This woman never gave a wrong answer, and thus set a fine example for all the brothers and sisters.