outintexas

Reminds me of Horton Hears a Who.... We are here! We are here! We are heeeere!

Cheers and applause!!! Very funny.

I got into twi when I was 17. I feel like an emotional Rip Van Winkle. I am truly a late bloomer. I'm going through the self-discovery phase now that most people do in their 20s. Fortunately I look about 15 years younger than my 48 years. When I start talking about my kids (20, 15 and 14) people look at me funny and say, "you must have gotten started early", but I was 27 when my oldest was born. Maybe it's a Twilight Zone thing. Look, there's Rod Serling in the corner with his cigarette... I do want to add - and I can't believe I've waited so long to say this - that Greasespot has been a huge source of therapy. The quantity and quality of discussion is amazing. If it were not for Greasespot, the whole twi experience would seem much more like a nightmare that I experienced alone. Knowing that so many others are going through the same recovery is very comforting. Y'all are really funny, too!

Yeah, sis. That was odd timing. We had been booted just days before our scheduled family trip to Del Mar in '99. You didn't even know we had been m&a'd until that night with the margaritas. We (me and my then-wife) decided not to go back while driving through Arizona on that Family Vacation. We were like the Griswolds. We stopped at the Grand Canyon on the way for two hours. Okay kids, back in the van. At least we didn't have to submit our itinerary to anyone before we left which had become standard twi procedure. I also forgot to mention the weekly schedules we had to turn in to our hfc detailing what we were doing, morning, afternoon and evening each day. I accept your apology for getting me in, but I could have left at any time, and I should have taken your exit years before as a cue to do the same. Oh well. As someone else here says, "Just say no to cults!" My therapist told me I probably shouldn't tell people I'm dating about twi for quite a while, if ever. "Oh by the way, I was in a cult for 25 years." That kinda scares 'em off for some reason.

And now, the rest of the story... In 1982 I went to the Living Victoriously class at HQ where we slept in tents for two weeks and listened to vpw teach in the big tent. Funny, I don't remember much else now. It was there I felt the "calling" go WOW again. Sure is easier to go WOW than study and finish college. There was a big push to go WOW that year because it was the 40th anniversary. So at ROA '82 I opened up my envelope and it says OKLAHOMA CITY. Oh boy. Again it was the two of each gender arrangement and again the coordinator was a corps girl on her interim year. On the drive to the Sooner state I mostly rode with the other girl. We began to click even then. She had just taken The Class only a few weeks before. OKC was one of several outreach cities that year. I think there were about 8 wow families there. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment. My wow sister and I were allowed to date on Saturday nights and by October we were already talking about marriage. I'm pretty sure we were supposed to get pre-marital counseling, but we never did. We interpreted that as meaning that we were so together that we didn't need it. Hah. We got married in a park on 8/27/83, one week after ROA. We got off to a rocky start, but I just figured that was normal since I didn't know any better. Also we were asked by leadership to take in a teenage girl as a roommate during that first year. She ended up moving out leaving us with her long distance phone bill. We would end up having five other roommates one after the other over the next five years. Three were dismissed corps. In December my new wife became pregnant. Quite a bit sooner than we wanted. That sure didn't help matters. Our son was born 9/23/84. We had him in a "birthing center." Several days later my wife brought him to the doctor for a scheduled follow-up appointment and he was extremely jaundiced. We didn't know. He was in ICU for a week and the prospects for major lifelong problems was high. We had everyone we could think of pray for him. He came home a week later. He started walking at 8 months and reading at 3. His hearing is fine. I ended up delivering flowers for a flower shop that was run by a married couple in twi. They still could be working there today, I don't know. Delivering flowers was a blast, but it sure didn't pay much, so I went back to college and got a degree in accounting in 1988. We were quite tired of Oklahoma City and the economy was bad so I decided to look for employment in the Dallas area. My then-wife had a cousin that lived in a suburb of Dallas, so we would stay there during the workweek while I looked for employment. Those were not fun times. It took about six weeks until I found a job in Fort Worth at the corporate headquarters of a chain of garden centers. During this time we were going to a twig that was affiliated with the Geer side of things. It was all very confusing then. I just remember that when it was time for abs, they would pass around three different horns. Choose your brand. In 1989 we got something in the mail from twi about an Acts Weekend in Emporia. We went there and that's how we got hooked back into the twi side of things. It was still fairly laid back then. Our twig leader was really cool. He and his wife and two girls lived in a nice house outside of town with a big half-acre lot. They loved it out there and would host branch things there. They ended up having enough sense to bail when the no-mortgage policy came down. I can't remember exactly when, perhaps 91 or so when we had new corps come in and take over. I just remember one evening when the doorbell rang and it was the corps guy dropping in unannounced and uninvited. Should have known then there was something wrong with that picture. But of course we were just lowly non-leadership and they were corps so who were we to question things? Also in 1989 we had our first daughter and our second daughter in 1991. Well we were supposed to have 'em by the barrelful, as vpw said, so I thought we were okay. But we were getting the attitude that we had too many kids. The screws kept tightening as time went by. By about 1993 things were quite oppressive. Read the way mag! Listen to the tapes! Go to twig. Go to this class, that event. And all while trying to run your family and make a living and perhaps maintain a marriage and a home. The no-debt thing came along and we were pressured into selling our humble little house. Oh but we were doing the right thing. Yeah, try to explain to your co-workers why you were moving. I tried to say as little as possible because it was embarassing. We as a couple got called on the carpet a couple of times at least. Special appointments to meet with the corps branch coordinators. Why were we still in debt? Our children were "out of control." Our house wasn't clean. The inquisition. Why we didn't leave then is hard to explain. See the "why did we stay" thread. You just had to be there. I was just trying to do the right thing. In February 1999 I had a panic attack at work. I am the last person to believe that a panic attack is real. I thought I was having a heart attack, really. The pain in my chest was real. And the more I could feel it the more I was freaking out. Our secretary called 911. Then she called my then-wife. Months later, the secretary would tell me that my then-wife said "oh, he'll be fine." On 5/25/99 we were told via a bizarre (although I think it was the standard procedure) phone call that we were put on "probation". We were scum, not worthy to remain in the walls of Zion. Guilty of treachery, he kept saying. Oh, but we could come back in six months. It was a three way call with the corpse coordinator, our hfc not saying much, and us. I just remember two things. What a relief and how this must be how a divorce feels like. At least we had enough sense to soon decide not to go back. But I think we were both more lost than we knew after that. But we sure did have more time on our hands. Soon we decided to have a new house built for us in a new subdivision going up not too far away. We moved into our new home in May 2000. At the time we were having big problems with our son who was 15 then. He was smoking pot and having all kinds of friends going in and out at all hours. Pretty much out of control. I wanted to go out for dinner for our 17th anniversary in August 2000, but our son acted up that day and she got upset so we didn't go that night. We never made up that date and I look at that as the beginning of the end. She was very unhappy and there was nothing I could do. She didn't want to be around me. I tried asking her girlfriends what was going on, but they didn't even know there was a problem. I told her that I had asked her girlfriends about her. I didn't want any secrets between us. She blew up and acted as if I had cheated on her. Soon after that she told me she wanted a divorce. She just wanted to leave and start over and leave me with the kids and the house. I asked her to consider marriage counseling but she wouldn't do it. She said she had enough counseling in twi. I tried to explain that was not counseling, but to no avail. I started seeing a therapist by myself in December 2000. My therapist told me emotionally I was 16 years old. We agreed that she would leave in the Spring. She was working in the cafeteria of the elementary school right behind our house. And in April she found a place and I (stupidly) helped her move out. I even cleaned the carpet of her new place. What an idiot I was. It was because I still cared for her. I just didn't see that she had fallen out of love with me many years before. In June I began the divorce procedures. I came home from the attorney on a Friday night, got on the computer and went into a divorcing chat room. Next thing I know I was hitting it off via IM with a lady 500 miles away. I totally fell head over heels and she did for me. We met a month later halfway, camping for a long weekend and I was in paradise. I was aware of the bounceback relationship, but of couse we were the exception to the rule. Wrong. 18 months later she didn't want to see me any more. I was devastated. It still hurts, but I'm wiser now. In the fall of 2003 my oldest daughter was severely depressed and began hurting herself. I took her to my therapist and she ended up in a hospital for a week. Through therapy and some meds, she is doing much much better now and is excelling in school. I'm out there dating now and then, trying to figure out women (ha ha). My ex, who lives locally, sees the girls now and then at her convenience, almost always with no advance notice. She remarried in June 2002. Met some guy and married him. The girls say she talks about God all the time. How she explains why her kids are with their dad, I don't know. I went to church for a while, but right now I'm not. I can't help but get a creepy feeling there. I went to a divorce support group there for a while run by some wonderful people. I used to complain about having my kids all the time with almost no break. Meeting people fighting for custody changed my tune in a hurry. "They" say what won't kill you, makes you stronger. I had never even heard that saying, much less understood it until these last few years. I'm still on an emotional rollercoaster but it's smoothed out a lot. I don't think I really knew how twi affected me until the last year or two. Same thing with the emotional abuse I endured in my marriage. I think there is a healthy level of anger that I should have. What happened to me simply wasn't right and I didn't deserve it. And I don't think that's victim mentality. Writing this is draining and that's probably why I've been putting it off. But I knew I finally had to tell my story because I yam what I yam. The wisdom of Popeye. Thanks for reading :)-->

Thanks for reading. Watch this space. I'll be back, but probably not for a week or so. My new life keeps me busy. And that's a good thing. -->

Don't you know you shouldn't ask "foolish and unlearned" questions?

Okay, I'm back. Sorry for the delay, but you know what? I can delay if I want to - hee hee hee... August 1978 and off to the Way College of Emporia. The prerequisites for enrollment were a high school diploma, tuition and a pulse. The first night we were there was "Get Acquainted Night." The 7th and 9th corps had already arrived. We all met in Wierwille Library (where were the books?) third floor. Everybody, and I do mean everybody, had their few minutes to introduce themselves. Hi! I'm in charge of sharpening pencils! It went on and on. Then we took a break and then somehow we resumed in that big room above the dining room. I have successfully forgotten the name. It had horrible lighting. We all sat on the floor and we went on for maybe two more hours. Just a preview of things to come over the next ten months. In later years the "back jack" would be the thing to have, but we did not have such a luxury then. To me, the "College Division" was like a tag-along little brother to the Way Corps. We were only required to attend the evening classes, meals at the cafeteria and participate in Fitness for Life, or whatever it was called. Basically running and earning aerobics points. I actually got into the running thing and I still run today. We had the dreaded 12-minute test several times. You simply ran, walked, crawled... as far as you could in 12 minutes on the track. The first time I only could do 4.5 laps. A couple of months later I did 6.5. There were measured running distances posted on a map. I usually ran three miles in a big rectangle. Out on 15th (?) street behind the campus west to Industrial, turn left, go past the Dolly Madison plant, left on 13th and back east to the compound, er, campus. I could do it in just under 24 minutes. A few times I ran the six-mile route which wound around and crossed over the turnpike. I lost a lot of weight that year as I did both my wow years. I'm six feet tall and I got down to about 165 pounds. Fortunately for me, I'm not a very picky eater so I was able to stomach some of the more unpopular dishes, such as the hated borscht, which was a big bowl of beets. Every so often the "seconds are available" announcement would be made and there would be an orderly stampede for more nourishment. There was one night where I had horrible gas during the evening class. Afterwards I got to talking with my roommates and it turned out everybody did, since we were all eating the same thing. We had all the classes you could have on the "field", plus several more. It was there I took the Advanceduh Class for the first time. Oooooo into the inner sanctum. Unlike the Way Corpse, we could leave the campus and I would sometimes make a run to the corner drug store for one particular 9th corpse lady, Fr*nn** W*st. She was cool. A carton was $5 something then. On occasion my roommate, R*ck S*nd* and I would go off to Willard's Donuts to satisfy our depraved sweet tooths. We felt like we were going to a whorehouse. We would also go to an all-you-can eat buffet sometimes. Also, we were allowed to sleep during the day. We would joke about being corps sleep sponsors. I hated Sundays. The Day of Meetings. After breakfast, you had to get ready for the 10:30 meeting, usually in that room - the Ambassador Room! Now I remember. The brain is a funny thing. LCM would go on and on and on as we sat on that hard cold floor. It always went late. Then downstairs for "dinner". Dorothy Owens would show up from time to time and yell at us, er, teach us about ettiquette. It always seemed like we would be having something difficult like roasted chicken or spaghetti when she was there. Sundays meant sack suppers. We'd get a sandwich, a container of yogurt, a rock-hard pear and a some kind of hard substance in a baggie. Around 3 you started the routine to get ready for the 5:00 service held usually in the un-air conditioned Kenyon Hall. It was a beautiful building, though. I really did have a good time for the most part in the Way College, but it didn't do me much good in the big picture. Emporia was a neat little town, except for the Iowa Farms meatpacking plant that stunk up the place, but only when it was downwind, or if there was no wind at all. So that was 1978-79. Next, on My Turn, my second WOW year in Oklahoma and how I met my now-ex-wife.

Thank you Galen!

I think it was in CF&S that vpw said about children... "have 'em by the barrellful!" We had three. We were treated like we had too many.

$750 a month rent is better than a $550 monthly mortgage.

I'm still here! I'll continue soon...

Wow. I can so relate. I've been out almost six years now, but only in the last year or so have I realized how much twi put my emotional and social growth on hold. My therapist recently told me that I am now emotionally about 21 years old. That's an improvement, because four years ago, she told me I was 16. I was 17 when I got involved with twi. I'm 48 now. I like to bowl, so I've been in a bowling league now for four years. I also checked out some churches and I started running. Exercise does wonders for the body and soul. My self-esteem has finally begun to rise from the ashes. I also found a job where I am appreciated. It took me a long time to realize that most folks are good people and will like you for who you are and are. I've pretty much had to build a new social network from scratch. Only we Greasespotters can really understand what we're going through. I am thankful for the years I have left and the unique awakening that I am experiencing. I don't know where I'll end up either, but I like where I'm heading.

Wow! I did not know most of this stuff. I was still in during all this, and would be for much longer. This period would become known within twi as the "fog years."

Vickles.. I figured it out... Stay At Home Mom I listen to Dr. Laura.

Helpful counsel. There was virtually no qualified counsel around regarding marriage. They'd throw Bible verses at us, as if we didn't know them. Basically, I was told I had made my choice as to whom I had married, deal with it.

I'm glad "happily married" is not necessarily an oxymoron!

O&O, you crack me up. I don't think I have a single towel that matches another one. That takes care of that problem.

Home movies, lol! That was a hobby I had for a while. I made some strange ones a la Mr. Bill. Let's see... the next year was 1977-78, and as we all know our years went from August to August. I went back home and worked at McDonald's and saved up for tuition to attend the Way C of E. It's funny how kids today think working fast-food is beneath them. Around here the employees at such restaurants are, um, well English is not their primary language. I actually liked it. It was hard work but I learned a lot and made some good friends. I worked an odd shift - 5AM to 1:30PM or whenever the lunch rush ended. I'd come in early and do the grunt work - filter the "shortening" in the deep fat fryers and clean the grills for another day. The word "grease" does not exist at McDonald's. It's "shortening" or "juices" depending on the context. I'd also help receive the deliveries and make sure the inventory was properly rotated. We had to wear those awful polyester uniforms and stupid paper hats. I never could totally get that onion smell off of my hands. Eventually I was promoted all the way to "crew chief". Whoopee. I got to make the calls on how many hamburgers would get cheese. To backtrack a bit, at my first McDonald's in Schenectady, they had real cash registers. You had to know the prices of everything and make change on your own. In other words, you needed a brain. Today, almost any cashier under 40 is clueless on making change. Amount due is $9.76. You hand over a ten, he/she punches it in. Oh wait, I have a penny... The cashier will just freeze. It's funny and sad at the same time. The Del Mar McDonalds experimented with new "modern" cash registers where the cashier had to fill in little circles on a card with a #2 pencil and stick it in a reader, just like an exam at school. Not surprisingly, that didn't last long. Yeah, that was a rough year. Living with the parents, working at McDonald's going to the beach.

Rolando or Orlando? I'm confused.

Was that like an annual review at work? I hate those. Here's why we're not giving you a raise...

Not me.

Onward... 1975... I went off to Boulder Colorado to begin college at CU. Being quite sheltered, I was pretty shocked at the nonsense that went on in the dorm. Being a good leaf, I very soon hooked up with the twig there and spent way too much of my time with twi activities. I took least a couple of seminars, or whatever they were called then, across the mountains in Grand Junction. They would cram 15 hours of a class into a weekend. I remember at least one round trip riding with some guy in his muscle car speeding and passing cars around blind curves through the mountains. This was when I-70 was just two lanes (one each way) in places through the canyons. Between my poor study habits and spending too much time with twi, I ended up with a GPA under 2.0 after the semester so I couldn't go back. That summer (1976) I did a state outreach program called Minutemen in Sterling, in the Northeast corner of Colorado. I was there with three other guys. J*d L*wm*n was our family coordinator. I'm pretty sure he went into the 7th corps. Funny I couldn't remember his name until just now. That was when the America Awakes album was released and the whole bicentennial thing was going on. Jed and I worked at a furniture store in Sterling doing deliveries, mostly. We had a good time together although we didn't get a whole lot of outreach accomplished. It was there that I got the news from CU that I would not be going back, so I decided to go WOW. Ah yes, putting God first. So 1976 was my first Rock of Ages. It was at the Shelby County Fairgrounds in Sidney, OH. It seemed rather magical - all the love and the excitement of not knowing where I would be assigned and who I would be going with. I think the Rock was only 3 and a half days then. Later it would grow to six days and not be so magical. On the last night of the Rock we opened up our envelopes and I was going to... Schenectady, NY! They sent six families of WOW's to the Albany area, the "Capitol District." Two to Schenectady, two to Troy and two to Albany itself. We all headed out with our glowing green lightsticks and drove to Columbus for a couple days of WOW training at the University of Ohio. My family constisted of D*r*ek C*ssm*n from Waukean, IL, Connie Somebody from Minnesota who I think went into the 10th corps and K*thy H*gg*ns who would become K*thy S*nk. (Would you like to buy a vowel?) She was in the 6th corps (interim year) and spent a LOT of time late at night, past midnight mind you, on the phone long-distance to her 6th corps fiancee, R*nn*e in Beaumont, TX. Long distance back then wasn't that cheap, and the phone bill was paid for out of the family fund which irritated me. But she was cool. I wonder where she is today. The first week we hit town and it seemed surreal. Soon we found a house to rent, fully furnished including things like dishes and a vacuum cleaner. A lady was renting it outfor a year so she could go visit her ailing mother. We lived on 1974 Nott Street in Schenectady, NY 12309. You can look it up on Mapquest. I think our rent was $250 a month. I worked at McDonalds in Mohawk Mall which no longer exists - the whole mall that is. The darndest things you can look up on Google. I made $2.10 an hour. My WOW brother made $3.00 an hour at Sears working in the automotive department. I was envious. The girls worked cleaning houses. K*thy had a borrowed 1964 or '65 Mustang that D*r*k did a lot of work on. None of us was much over 20 years old. I think all six of the WOW families consisted of two men and two women. Why did they do this? Nobody was complaining, that's for sure, but common sense would say to segregate the sexes. As far as I know nothing went on in our family, but there was a lot of "tension". In October of that year I drove D*r*k's Rambler into the back of a Cadillac in a line of cars at a red light on Balltown Road. I just wasn't paying attention. I ended up losing my license because his car wasn't insured. And I was fined $250 which I never paid... until 2001!! Yes, in 2001 I got a notice from the Texas Dept. of Public Safety (aka as the DMV in most other states). They had done some cross referencing and I could not renew my TX driver's license until I paid the $250 fine to the State of New York. Thankfully there was no penalty or interest!! Doing the math (as my manner is, as an accountant - that comes later) even a modest amount of accrued interest on $250 over 25 years would have put that figure well into the thousands. We ran two PFAL classes that year. One in the deep of the Winter and one in the Summer. They were both audio tape classses. During that year, if memory serves me right, they combined the Foundational and Intermediate classes and put them together and upped the "required donation" to $200. I ran the tapes - they were on audio cassettes. There was one cassette that had the label on the wrong side so I actually played two half-hour segments in reverse order. And I don't think anyone noticed. Then in June there was PFAL '77 at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. We WOWs were given special permission to go. Everybody thought we would be witnessing live the recording of the new piffle class to be used in the future, but that was not to be the case. No we were not misinformed, we misunderstood! Near the end of my WOW year, somebody in leadership thought the Way College Division would be good for me, so I decided to attend there, but not for another year. To be continued...

Okay, okay!! Sheesh!! I'll get to all that in the coming days. Watch this space.

Hey sis! I didn't know half of this stuff! Please continue...