For a short time I let my family believe that I was all about Bethel – but that was for a very short time. In my mid-teens I made it known, in no uncertain terms, that I wasn’t interested in being a JW. Boy, did the proverbial shit hit the fan! My relationship, not only with my parents, but with my extremely devout pioneer aunts and uncles, was very ugly. So after much name-calling and being ripped up one side and down the other for not wanting to embrace my family’s religion, I finally relented and started playing the good little JW girl to get everyone off my back. For now, living my own life was something that would have to be placed on the back burner.

Eventually, my parents and I moved across the country to Southern California. One of the reasons they did this was to start over and put the nightmare I had put them through behind them. It wasn’t completely behind us, though. When you move to a new congregation, the records from your old congregation follow you. This means, if you caused any type of trouble whatsoever, your new elders will know about it and a watchful eye will definitely be kept on you!

One of the first friends I made in our new congregation was a girl around my age, a high school student, who was also a full-time pioneer. To this day I still can’t understand how she managed to go to school, work part time as a waitress and spend 90 hours a month preaching. Of course I’m not going to mention her real name so I’ll just call her Pollyanna.

Anyway, I’m sure my parents couldn’t have been more tickled to death about my new-found friendship with Pollyanna. Not only did they move me from a Brooklyn public high school to a high school in Surfer City where the kids drove Volkswagen bugs to school and said things like “isn’t that neat" but to top it off, the first friend I made was a pioneer! I’m sure they had visions dancing around in their minds eye of how she would teach me how satisfying and rewarding it would be to spend your entire Saturdays going to strange people’s homes and teaching them about God’s kingdom, then getting up again on Sunday to sit through a two-hour meeting.

Like most JW kids, I eventually became adept at "fake ringing the doorbell." "Fake ringing the doorbell" is exactly as it sounds. Of course, common sense is needed when applying this method; if you fake it at every single door you approach when it's your turn to give your spiel to the householder your door-to-door partner will wise to it. I hated going “house-to-house” as JW’s call it. I simply did not feel comfortable going to people’s homes to talk to them about religion. I thought it was rude, I thought it was unsafe and, frankly I never fully believed the things I was being taught, so now I’m going to harass people in the privacy of their own homes to convince them of something of which I wasn’t convinced? I was never good at talking to strangers, too. When I was roughly about ten years old I accompanied one of my pioneer aunts on the house-to-house work and she was far from impressed with my preaching skills. At ten years old my presentation at the door went something along the lines of, “Hello, my name is Brenda and I’m a Jehovah’s Witness. Would you like a copy of the Watchtower and Awake magazines?” My aunt acted as if I just asked the householder if they wanted to see my underwear. Apparently, my preaching skills at the age of ten were not up to her standards! She even had me repeat my presentation to my other pioneer aunt who was equally horrified.

Sometimes, if I was lucky, Pollyanna would take me on one of her Bible studies (people who were actively studying to become JW’s). I preferred those because she would do most of the talking and I could just sit there. Sometimes the Bible studies weren’t all that great, either. One summer when I was still living in Brooklyn and began playing the “good little JW" part, I accompanied a pioneer from our congregation on one of her Bible studies. Her Bible study lived in a pretty shady neighborhood - not a problem, I would still get to sit and essentially sleep with my eyes open while my partner did the work. When we arrived at this girls apartment building my partner, I’ll call her Rosa, tells me to leave my bag in the trunk of her car as I won’t want to bring it inside with me. I thought it strange that she thought it was a good idea for us to leave our bags in the car in this neighborhood rather than bring them with us, but I didn’t think to question her. As we walk into the apartment, I see something scramble across the wall. I look to my left, I see something else running for its life. When you walked into this apartment, the first room you enter is the kitchen, so to the right of me was the stove and I saw yet another creature scurry along the stovetop and into one of the burners. This apartment was completely infested with roaches of which I have a crippling fear! I am terrified of them! How I sat in that apartment for an hour without fainting, throwing up or soiling myself is beyond me. I could have said something such as, “You go ahead with your study. I’ll take my chances by getting stabbed waiting for you outside.” But as every good Witness knows, we don’t want to take the chance of offending the householder, thus losing a new recruit. This would be one of many times I would have to grin and bear it for the family religion.