Door-to-Door

Psalms 83:18 “May people know that you, whose name is Jehovah, You alone are the Most High over all the earth. (New World’s Translation, Bible)

In 1975, I was almost 6 years old and the world was coming to an end.

Since God is a Jehovah’s Witness, he reached out to his “Governing Body”, a group of 12 old white men huddled in the Witness headquarters located in Brooklyn Heights, New York and this information of impending doom eventually funneled its way down to us in the Bronx and the rest of the world.

Yes, at the ripe old age of 5 and a half Armageddon was nigh and God would be destroying the world as we knew it.

There would be no 1976.

As the worker bees in the organization, it was our duty young and old to go door to door and let everyone know of God’s plan. 99.9% of the world’s population wasn’t privy to this information, because 99.9% of the world’s population are worldly losers. But not us. You see, we had The Truth. We were a bunch of Noah’s running around before the flood advising the sinners there were only a few months left to repent of your sinful ways or you’d have no one to blame for your death but yourself. As Witnesses, we'd go door-to-door with a two minute or less prepared presentation. It's like an elevator pitch the only difference being you're waking people up at their home. On a Saturday morning.

At 8AM.

I didn't pray much. But I did pray that I wouldn't knock on someone's door that I knew. Not so much for the humiliation factor, but more for the "wait, YOU"RE a Witness? You do worse things in school than me!" factor.

Back in the pink song book days, when me, my brother, Troy and Timmy had Kingdom Hall microphone duties, when Brother Diesher sold over ripened fruit near the Westchester Square train station and we were all aghast when Barbara Brown bit the matzo at the Memorial - we distributed Watchtower and Awakes detailing the earth’s impending finale and the New System of the things that would shortly follow.

Peddling Watchtower and Awakes while reading books my father would give me like Malcolm X and They Came Before Columbus made for some interesting questions on the other side of the spectrum which the Witness elders rarely answered, much less entertained.

"Wasn't Egypt called Kush which means ‘black people’? And if Moses was a Jewish baby and was able to be raised as an Egyptian by Pharaoh’s daughter then wouldn't it stand to reason that the original Israelites were dark skinned people too?"

"Don't worry yourself with the frivolous concerns of race," they'd tell me. "It's the Word, you must concern yourself with. It's the WORD!"

Word?

My boy Troy's older brother, Sam Butter, preached of the Word. He was about 10 years older than us and his teenage friends didn’t share the same beliefs we had.

Then January 1, 1976 came.

"Yo, Butter what's good? We still here. Where's the fire and brimstone? What's going on? Where's the thunder and lightning at? They asked between rounds of raucous laughter.

And so it went.

Thousands of Witnesses would leave the religion in 1976. In frustration. In embarrassment.

In debt.

With the world coming to an end, Witnesses were out buying houses, boats and myriads of other things they couldn’t afford. Why not? Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we shall die! But then 1976 came and so many believers had lost face, faith and finances.

“But wait! There's new information!”

Whenever there was a prophesy that didn’t come to pass, there’d suddenly be “new information” at the ready the following Sunday. A collective “My bad” from the Governing Body. One of them read the tea leaves wrong; put the decimal point in the wrong place; forgot to carry the one.

“There will be no 1976.”

“But wait, there’s new information!”

“Don’t have your children take SATs. The world will be over and they should spend all their time preaching instead, converting heathens!”

“But wait! There's new information!”

“The world is only 6,000 years old. There were no dinosaurs!” - I think they still believe this one, actually.

I noticed at a young age that their image of God is petty. Sitting up there with a Trump like scowl, bullying his subjects and keeping score. That's not the type of God I'd like to subscribe to. Some petty, pouted mouth deity keeping everlasting score. You made me in your image and gave me free choice, there's gonna be some sinning happening. Also, you couldn’t pray directly to God, you had to have a mediator in Jesus and end all your prayers “In Jesus’ name, Amen,” or else your prayers wouldn’t be heard. Not sure if it’s like that in other religions.

Even their discipline practices seemed antiquated. When a person sins and is at their lowest - shouldn't that be the point where extra love and encouragement is shown to them? To be encouraged to "hang in there?" But instead a person is disfellowshipped and you have to pretend they no longer exist. People you grew up with, known for years, family members!

“I've known you for years but until you get your shit together I’m gonna pretend I don't know you. Because I love you."

Look, I'm a lazy writer, OK? None of this was researched, I haven't interviewed anyone that's been disfellowshipped to delve into their feelings and it's never happened to me personally, but as a human being with emotions common to other human beings, I think I might be onto something here. I wouldn't want to come back after being treated like that. 

There was a kid in my second-grade class whose parents were Witnesses. I’ll call him Robert Williams because that was his name. One Friday afternoon the teacher gave cookies to the class and instructed everyone to take a cookie and pass on the plate. Robert took two. The following Monday he was made to wear a huge poster board around his neck which read: Do not speak to me I am a liar and a theif with the word “thief” misspelled. Later on in the school year, Robert’s family was moving to Texas so the class threw a going away party for him. The following Monday he was back in class with no explanation as if nothing happened. So we all pretended he was in Texas anyway, barely talking to him then when we did speak to him pretending it was a long-distance call.

(This story really has nothing to do with anything I spoke of earlier other than this kid was the parents of Witnesses, I knew him and the crux of this blog is Witness related material. Make of that story as you wish. We were funny kids though.)

But there’s a flip side to this – what if the Witnesses are right and the 99.9% of everyone else is wrong?

I die, meet God and she's wearing a name badge that says "Jehovah".

"You know, Askia I tried to tell you but you didn't listen. You shouldn't have taken the 1975 thing so personally. Didn't you get the new information?"

That would totally suck. I pray that doesn't happen!

In Jesus' name.

Amen. 

Freightened Clam: Alternative Spelling in the drumpf Error

I was eliminated in the 4th grade Spelling Bee for failing to say, "capital F" when prompted to spell the common noun, February. But at 9 years old, I knew there was an r after the b. In the last sentence, I knew there was not their or they're.

My soon to be ex assistant doesn't use spell check which adds to my angst and daily agita. After several admonitions and countless what the fuck faces, she continues to hand me nonsensical drivel disguised as memorandums and correspondence which would be amusing if she didn't sign my name to them and attempt to send them to my co-workers and clients; clients who depend on my leadership and sound judgment then in turn pay me in legal currency with which I buy things like food and clothing and make car payments. 

“Please make an agenda for Saturday’s team meeting,” I asked her. An innocent enough task that wouldn’t require any out of department eyes. It didn’t dawn on me until I returned and saw her version of an agenda how determined she was to attend NYU: New York Unemployment.

There were arrows leading to extraneous bullet points; names of persons I should have recognized had their names not been butchered and then I noticed the phrase: freightened clam. Unnecessary arrows pointing to needless bullet points aside “what the hell is a freightened clam?” Without bothering to make eye contact, (it seemed as if I was annoying her with the question!), she then muttered something about "rough draft" very Bartleby the Scrivener-like which would be hilarious to me if I was reading about this and not living it.

Reading.

As in an author wrote a funny story which included an office assistant character that worked for an anal boss and didn't give a damn about spell check and attempted to sign his name on rambling, nonsensical documents - because when you’re living it, it tends to lose its humor. Not it's humour because it being humourous would be correct in the UK though it really wouldn't be. Contractions aside, contraceptives may have prevented me from getting a spell less assistant but that's both a cruel and unusual thing to say - about as much as it is to freighten a helpless clam. I mean, it's a bi-valve, paid bi-annually and who could really live with such an arrangement? Imagine being paid twice a year? I barely make it bi-weekly.

I also know that some people write the way they speak which still doesn't excuse "freightened clam". When I attempt to type the word "freightened" autocorrect even tries to have me write "freighters" which must be a thing so freighters must be right to write - though it is actually typed. Because if she were to write freightened then obviously there would be no autocorrect so I'd have to be more understanding because to err is human - when writing freightened or the phrase freightened clam with a pen onto an actual piece of paper that was once a tree. Photosynthesis has something to do with the way trees breathe if I were to relax my mind and start a stream of consciousness flow. Trees may enhance the flow but I'm frightened that would clam up my thought process and take me to the Ether. Nas destroyed Jay but to Jay's credit he stayed pretty much unscathed when that pummeling would've ended a lesser MCs career - see Cannibis - which will bring me back to do-o-o-oe... (initially I ended that with do-o-o-o but since it was referring to doe as in baby dear I added the e.)

That's the thought process.

When I was in advertising a lifetime ago, Richard Lewis would make us pay him a dollar for every misspelled word. You send out a memo (before email days) with any word misspelled and a dollar of yours would go in a jar on his desk. When the jar was full he’d buy us all pizza– or not! – and start the whole process again. Typos hurt when you’re making $21k a year!

I have a friend that wrote a work memo when he was high once. I don't know for sure if he was high at the time but he might as well had been. The memo was a rebuttal to a letter his manager wrote to HR about why he wanted to fire him. My friend’s “response” was bizarre and chock full of typos. I remember reading it and honestly telling him to pack up whatever shit he had at the office lest his rebuttal be used as exhibit A, B and C against him. It's like, why didn't you just save the time writing back and just quit? He spoke of removing a stain from the wall in the bathroom with his finger and instead wrote "bedroom figuer" then drifted into some other equally bizarre territory.  

Maybe they should start a firm together “Freightened Clam Figuer ”.

But I digress.

So, after the holidays, I will be bidding a farewell to my soon to be ex-assistant, she of the freightened clam. I have no idea what her next endeavor will be, but if she ever attempts to write a book, I will be first in line. 

It's gonna be hilarious!