One that I still chuckle about occurred when I was taking LCM's R&E class. I was witnessing in a neighborhood with a young man. When we came to one gate and rang the bell, we waited a couple of minutes; and then a sheepish voice came from behind the gate: "Who's there?" The young man answered,"Jeffrey." It was the truth, of course, but it meant nothing to the guy behind the gate! Well, we spoke with him for a few minutes -- he never opened the gate -- and moved on.
In Fellow Laborers of Ohio my first year, we were divvied up like spare change and sent to various areas to witness every evening after work. No supper, just meet at a given place and go door to door witnessing. Now it was winter, snow, ice, cold, the whole nine yards. I worked in Columbus and had to meet my team up in Gahanna for an exciting evening.
It did actually turn out to be pretty exciting, not because "The Word Moved" or anything like that, but because I got to pair up with my future husband! We had a good time.
One night, on an unfamiliar snowy road, I drove my car partially off the road into a ditch. We were stuck! No two ways about it, that sucker wasn't moving.
The future Mr. Garden got out and assessed the situation. He told me to put the car in reverse and when he gave me the word, hit the gas. He heaved that car right on up out of there!
Didn't even hurt his back.
We went on our merry way, getting told to "get off my porch", snarled at by chihuahuas, etc. But it was still a neat and godly thing that the car got unstuck. No way could he have done that without God's help.
fooledagainII, you do have a knack for posting compelling questions. :)
Don't know if this would be bad, funny, weird, or just sad; but it's the one that came to my mind...
The timeframe is around 1980-81. Takit (a music group at TWI for a while) had a performance in Dayton, OH. (The event had a name, and they did several across the country. Does anyone remember what they called these things?) As I recall, this was the first of those events. In support of that outreach, a lot of us were sent to 'witness' at the Dayton Mall early that day, to get people to come to the thing. After a while, LCM (he was in that group of witnessers too) started hotfooting it to the door, saying that we all had to leave with him pronto. What happened? He had apparently hassled a few too many mall shoppers, the shoppers then complained, causing the mall security to call for the local police to come. The police had in fact gotten there, and our future prez was scootin outta there before they could get 'im.
Once one of my room mates & I were witnessing in our multi-ethnic neighborhood in NYC. Eric was multilingual. One night Eric witnessed in English, Spanish, Portugeuse and maybe Russian. Same night we see two guys leaning up against a car and started talking to them. They looked real nervous and we soon found out why: they were siphoning gas out of the car they were leaning against!
In the mid-nineties, our Way Corps leaders were told that they needed to "teach us to witness". At this time our area was full of WOWvets and people who had been involved in TWI since the eraly 70's. We knew how to witness. One afternoon they took me with them to "teach" me. Mr. WC started talking to a man & his wife, whon turned out to be Mormons who witnessed to him. Instead of being graceful about it our fearless leader started shouting at these Mormons, culminating with "you're inSANE" at the top of his lungs, inside the store! I still won't shop there.
one time we saw a house of nuns in habits watching football and stuffing envelopes.
witnessing to other jesus freaks was always a long painfull debate process.
the absloute worst was mall witnessing trips- because if a girl from school so much as waved i had to offer her the truth.
when i wasnt the one talking sucked because id be standing there, siting as hard as i could trying to use the maniftation of beliving to open thier heart, feeling somewhat responcible for thier hard heartedness. after all, the law of beliving is clear that if i expected people to recieve the word...
one time a person id witnessed to came his first fellowship and instead of a teaching we watched athleetes of the spirit, wich is hard to... not laugh at with a secular mindset.
fooledagainII, you do have a knack for posting compelling questions. :)
Don't know if this would be bad, funny, weird, or just sad; but it's the one that came to my mind...
The timeframe is around 1980-81. Takit (a music group at TWI for a while) had a performance in Dayton, OH. (The event had a name, and they did several across the country. Does anyone remember what they called these things?) As I recall, this was the first of those events. In support of that outreach, a lot of us were sent to 'witness' at the Dayton Mall early that day, to get people to come to the thing. After a while, LCM (he was in that group of witnessers too) started hotfooting it to the door, saying that we all had to leave with him pronto. What happened? He had apparently hassled a few too many mall shoppers, the shoppers then complained, causing the mall security to call for the local police to come. The police had in fact gotten there, and our future prez was scootin outta there before they could get 'im.
I hijacked a meeting during my WoW year. Others in the family had suggested we went to a Christian fellowship meeting at a local college. So with some reluctance I went with them. The two girls organizing the meeting (it was the inaugural one) suggested we write on some blank paper things we were worried about, and we would pray about them. I think they also went round the room asking what we were afraid of (or something like). Well, no way was I going to spout off to strangers about that and I moved straight into a teaching on Seven Things God Wants you to Know (it was on a credit card sized card produced by TWI). The girls were open mouthed about it but there was a young lad there who was thrilled. After the meeting, the girls were a bit baffled about the takeover and the lad left so two of us distracted the girls and the rest of us rushed out after the lad to see if he wanted to know more.
Actually he did, he came to our twig faithfully for the rest of the WoW year, we had a great time together, and he went WoW after the end of the year. He was a great guy and I hope everything worked out well for him and he didn't get hurt. As for the girls, I hope also they progressed in their knowledge of the Lord.
Whilst out Lightbearers, I got "I'm not a Christian, I'm a Catholic" a few times when doorknocking. Hard to respond though when the door is closed in your face.
Very funny one about the Prez-to-be being kicked out of the shopping mall . Gives a whole new look to "VP and me" and the claims made therein.
.... sucked because id be standing there, siting as hard as i could trying to use the maniftation of beliving to open thier heart, feeling somewhat responcible for thier hard heartedness. after all, the law of beliving is clear that if i expected people to recieve the word...
snip
ugh.
Nick,
I appreciate the thoughts and the scenes that you posted. Witnessing, ugh! For sure!
I did it too, like most everyone else. I have to say, in retrospect, that I pretty much hated it.
God has no hands but our hands? I was so duped (even thought that I had answers!)
"TAKE A STAND CARAVAN" ... thank you WordWolf. Way too many event titles for me to sort them out now.
A different witnessing thing (something that might fit at that celebrity thread, but this name might not be as well known) involved a guest speaker that came to hq for a weekend once.
Tom Brown, an author of several wilderness survival and trail books, came to speak about his book "The Tracker". He gave a good presentation,
he was open to questions; he knew his topic, had 'been there' types of experience. An approachable and easy to talk to sort of guy. (my recollection, as someone who was just listening from a chair in the room)
This was not a VPW event, but he was in the room too. (Which is to say that vic wasn't parading this guy around, someone else had invited him)
I have described all of 'that' to describe 'this': When the 'Guest Speaker' was gone, at an after meeting VP asked for comments about the speaker. There was alot of enthusiasm from people in the room: "Great guy, Great time, Great learning" ... all of that. But VP was not happy that so many people had liked the speaker. The speaker, said VP, had sold all of us on his product. But we, said VP, had not sold him on ours. All of that enthusiasm evaporated.
That is the incident, at least as I recall it. Take from it what you will.
Why post it? just another example among thousands (millions?) of examples of how selling pfl was probably more important than the people.
I did an internet search on that author (Tom Brown), and it brought this memory full circle for me to find that he also wrote about "The Vision: The Dramatic True Story of One Man's Search for Enlightenment". Maybe he had different ideas, and VP couldn't sell him his?
My most memorable is a door-to-door-with-group (don't remember where or when) and I had my two kids and no one wanted to go with us so we went off, they got ice cream and soda pop and the oldest who was missing super bowl got to watch the game.
And I had a nice time talking about the Lord and His goodness and Grace (which I always love to do).
Another time in FLO we went to some college or other for dorm-to-dorm witnessing. I was with two other women in some dorm room talking to a couple of girls, when the third year Fellow Laborer lady, being amazingly naive, gets up, goes to the window, and admires the houseplant growing there. What does she use to fertilize it? It's beautiful and so healthy with those lovely deep green serrated leaves. What kind of plant is it? The girl who owns the plant kind of mumbles that she really doesn't know exactly what it is. About that time, my bored to the bone self looks over........and it's a freakin' MARIJUANA plant!
It seemed like the girls who shared the room were kind of anxious for us to leave for some strange reason after that.
I don't even remember if I told the planter lover with us what she had been admiring. I was pretty dumfounded that someone actually existed who had no idea what a marijuana plant looks like.
Waysider, if you read this, please let me know if you guess who it was!!!!!
Another time in FLO we went to some college or other for dorm-to-dorm witnessing. I was with two other women in some dorm room talking to a couple of girls, when the third year Fellow Laborer lady, being amazingly naive, gets up, goes to the window, and admires the houseplant growing there. What does she use to fertilize it? It's beautiful and so healthy with those lovely deep green serrated leaves. What kind of plant is it? The girl who owns the plant kind of mumbles that she really doesn't know exactly what it is. About that time, my bored to the bone self looks over........and it's a freakin' MARIJUANA plant!
It seemed like the girls who shared the room were kind of anxious for us to leave for some strange reason after that.
I don't even remember if I told the planter lover with us what she had been admiring. I was pretty dumfounded that someone actually existed who had no idea what a marijuana plant looks like.
Waysider, if you read this, please let me know if you guess who it was!!!!!
I remember I was out witnessing once with someone from my twig and we came across a limping dog. So we decided to call the dog over to us and pray for him. We closed our eyes and my brother in Christ gave this long prayer for this dog. He prayed for his legs, his happiness and everything else under the sun for this dog. When we opened our eyes this dog was nowhere to be found.
My twig went witnessing at a frat bar on the U of Ill. campus some January. I started talking with a couple of sorority girls (of course) and brought up the Bible. One of them opined, "Isn't this a strange thing to be talking about in a bar?" I asked, "What would you like to talk about?" She said, "I don't know. What we did on our Christmas vacation, or something." "Okay, what did you do on your Christmas vacation?" "Nothing." "Okay, then let's talk about God!"
Wausau, WI 1975-1976. We went out door - to - door witnessing at night, when it had to be 0 to 20 below. Well, of course, very few people opened their doors that night.
One did, ten minutes later, we were in a cop car, going to the police station.
Once the police figured out what we were about, they figured we were harmless, let us go, and actually gave us a ride back home.
The home in question was the police chief's house, and as his wife was the one who answered the door, I do not believe she was too happy with us.
There we were, on the WOW field in Nashville, TN ('92-'93)...
Hubby (version 1.0) and I were with our team at the Maharry Medical College campus, going door to door.
We came across what looked like a dorm and thought we'd hit pay dirt when we found the door was unlocked. There was also a guy in a very casual clothing (pj's and robe), reading a book or newspaper.
Hubby (1.0), who thought he was going to save the world, started witnessing to this guy. The guy started out being just annoyed with us but that quickly escalated into anger and worse. The guy was Muslim - and had a nasty opinion of Christians.
Before we knew it, we were fleeing from the building with this guy s-c-r-e-a-m-i-n-g behind us. It was a high drama moment for sure.
As we exited the building, I looked up and saw a sign over the door way - the building wasn't a dorm... it was the Psychiatric Ward of the University's hospital!
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GeorgeStGeorge
So many incidents, so little time!
One that I still chuckle about occurred when I was taking LCM's R&E class. I was witnessing in a neighborhood with a young man. When we came to one gate and rang the bell, we waited a couple of minutes; and then a sheepish voice came from behind the gate: "Who's there?" The young man answered,"Jeffrey."
It was the truth, of course, but it meant nothing to the guy behind the gate! 
Well, we spoke with him for a few minutes -- he never opened the gate -- and moved on.
George
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Watered Garden
Okay, here's a pretty neat one:
In Fellow Laborers of Ohio my first year, we were divvied up like spare change and sent to various areas to witness every evening after work. No supper, just meet at a given place and go door to door witnessing. Now it was winter, snow, ice, cold, the whole nine yards. I worked in Columbus and had to meet my team up in Gahanna for an exciting evening.
It did actually turn out to be pretty exciting, not because "The Word Moved" or anything like that, but because I got to pair up with my future husband! We had a good time.
One night, on an unfamiliar snowy road, I drove my car partially off the road into a ditch. We were stuck! No two ways about it, that sucker wasn't moving.
The future Mr. Garden got out and assessed the situation. He told me to put the car in reverse and when he gave me the word, hit the gas. He heaved that car right on up out of there!
Didn't even hurt his back.
We went on our merry way, getting told to "get off my porch", snarled at by chihuahuas, etc. But it was still a neat and godly thing that the car got unstuck. No way could he have done that without God's help.
WG
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wing
fooledagainII, you do have a knack for posting compelling questions. :)
Don't know if this would be bad, funny, weird, or just sad; but it's the one that came to my mind...
The timeframe is around 1980-81. Takit (a music group at TWI for a while) had a performance in Dayton, OH. (The event had a name, and they did several across the country. Does anyone remember what they called these things?) As I recall, this was the first of those events. In support of that outreach, a lot of us were sent to 'witness' at the Dayton Mall early that day, to get people to come to the thing. After a while, LCM (he was in that group of witnessers too) started hotfooting it to the door, saying that we all had to leave with him pronto. What happened? He had apparently hassled a few too many mall shoppers, the shoppers then complained, causing the mall security to call for the local police to come. The police had in fact gotten there, and our future prez was scootin outta there before they could get 'im.
Come to think of it, it is funny.
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waysider
When I was still real green, my twig leader took me witnessing at a local bar.
(We were in our early 20's and we're both guys.)
We introduced ourselves to two very attractive young ladies and before long were sharing a table with them.
My twig leader got onto the "law of believing".
At one point in the conversation, he said, "believing is a verb and a verb connotes "action".
Well, I don't think they were under the impression they were involved in a grammar lesson.
"Action" is what they were looking for.
I wish I had a video of him back-pedaling and hemming and hawing to cover his butt.
It was really quite comical to watch him try to save face.
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excathedra
i don't care
just tell me what the color of that couch was
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Oakspear
Once one of my room mates & I were witnessing in our multi-ethnic neighborhood in NYC. Eric was multilingual. One night Eric witnessed in English, Spanish, Portugeuse and maybe Russian. Same night we see two guys leaning up against a car and started talking to them. They looked real nervous and we soon found out why: they were siphoning gas out of the car they were leaning against!
In the mid-nineties, our Way Corps leaders were told that they needed to "teach us to witness". At this time our area was full of WOWvets and people who had been involved in TWI since the eraly 70's. We knew how to witness. One afternoon they took me with them to "teach" me. Mr. WC started talking to a man & his wife, whon turned out to be Mormons who witnessed to him. Instead of being graceful about it our fearless leader started shouting at these Mormons, culminating with "you're inSANE" at the top of his lungs, inside the store! I still won't shop there.
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nick
excited dogs at the door are always bad.
one time we saw a house of nuns in habits watching football and stuffing envelopes.
witnessing to other jesus freaks was always a long painfull debate process.
the absloute worst was mall witnessing trips- because if a girl from school so much as waved i had to offer her the truth.
when i wasnt the one talking sucked because id be standing there, siting as hard as i could trying to use the maniftation of beliving to open thier heart, feeling somewhat responcible for thier hard heartedness. after all, the law of beliving is clear that if i expected people to recieve the word...
one time a person id witnessed to came his first fellowship and instead of a teaching we watched athleetes of the spirit, wich is hard to... not laugh at with a secular mindset.
ugh.
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WordWolf
"TAKE A STAND CARAVAN."
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waysider
Irony in its finest form.
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Twinky
I hijacked a meeting during my WoW year. Others in the family had suggested we went to a Christian fellowship meeting at a local college. So with some reluctance I went with them. The two girls organizing the meeting (it was the inaugural one) suggested we write on some blank paper things we were worried about, and we would pray about them. I think they also went round the room asking what we were afraid of (or something like). Well, no way was I going to spout off to strangers about that and I moved straight into a teaching on Seven Things God Wants you to Know (it was on a credit card sized card produced by TWI). The girls were open mouthed about it but there was a young lad there who was thrilled. After the meeting, the girls were a bit baffled about the takeover and the lad left so two of us distracted the girls and the rest of us rushed out after the lad to see if he wanted to know more.
Actually he did, he came to our twig faithfully for the rest of the WoW year, we had a great time together, and he went WoW after the end of the year. He was a great guy and I hope everything worked out well for him and he didn't get hurt. As for the girls, I hope also they progressed in their knowledge of the Lord.
Whilst out Lightbearers, I got "I'm not a Christian, I'm a Catholic" a few times when doorknocking. Hard to respond though when the door is closed in your face.
Very funny one about the Prez-to-be being kicked out of the shopping mall
. Gives a whole new look to "VP and me" and the claims made therein.
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wing
[quote name='nick' date='May 30 2008, 10:51 PM' post='414271'
snip
.... sucked because id be standing there, siting as hard as i could trying to use the maniftation of beliving to open thier heart, feeling somewhat responcible for thier hard heartedness. after all, the law of beliving is clear that if i expected people to recieve the word...
snip
ugh.
Nick,
I appreciate the thoughts and the scenes that you posted. Witnessing, ugh! For sure!
I did it too, like most everyone else. I have to say, in retrospect, that I pretty much hated it.
God has no hands but our hands? I was so duped (even thought that I had answers!)
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wing
"TAKE A STAND CARAVAN" ... thank you WordWolf. Way too many event titles for me to sort them out now.
A different witnessing thing (something that might fit at that celebrity thread, but this name might not be as well known) involved a guest speaker that came to hq for a weekend once.
Tom Brown, an author of several wilderness survival and trail books, came to speak about his book "The Tracker". He gave a good presentation,
he was open to questions; he knew his topic, had 'been there' types of experience. An approachable and easy to talk to sort of guy. (my recollection, as someone who was just listening from a chair in the room)
This was not a VPW event, but he was in the room too. (Which is to say that vic wasn't parading this guy around, someone else had invited him)
I have described all of 'that' to describe 'this': When the 'Guest Speaker' was gone, at an after meeting VP asked for comments about the speaker. There was alot of enthusiasm from people in the room: "Great guy, Great time, Great learning" ... all of that. But VP was not happy that so many people had liked the speaker. The speaker, said VP, had sold all of us on his product. But we, said VP, had not sold him on ours. All of that enthusiasm evaporated.
That is the incident, at least as I recall it. Take from it what you will.
Why post it? just another example among thousands (millions?) of examples of how selling pfl was probably more important than the people.
I did an internet search on that author (Tom Brown), and it brought this memory full circle for me to find that he also wrote about "The Vision: The Dramatic True Story of One Man's Search for Enlightenment". Maybe he had different ideas, and VP couldn't sell him his?
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Oakspear
I thought "Take a Stand Caravan" was Joyful Noise in 1979.
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Kit Sober
My most memorable is a door-to-door-with-group (don't remember where or when) and I had my two kids and no one wanted to go with us so we went off, they got ice cream and soda pop and the oldest who was missing super bowl got to watch the game.
And I had a nice time talking about the Lord and His goodness and Grace (which I always love to do).
(I told the kids that the Lord would bless them.)
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pebbles
Hi!
My worst experience was witnessing to any my family or friends. I cringe when they bring it up now.
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Watered Garden
Another time in FLO we went to some college or other for dorm-to-dorm witnessing. I was with two other women in some dorm room talking to a couple of girls, when the third year Fellow Laborer lady, being amazingly naive, gets up, goes to the window, and admires the houseplant growing there. What does she use to fertilize it? It's beautiful and so healthy with those lovely deep green serrated leaves. What kind of plant is it? The girl who owns the plant kind of mumbles that she really doesn't know exactly what it is. About that time, my bored to the bone self looks over........and it's a freakin' MARIJUANA plant!
It seemed like the girls who shared the room were kind of anxious for us to leave for some strange reason after that.
I don't even remember if I told the planter lover with us what she had been admiring. I was pretty dumfounded that someone actually existed who had no idea what a marijuana plant looks like.
Waysider, if you read this, please let me know if you guess who it was!!!!!
WG
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waysider
Hmmmmmmm.
The initials K.K. seem to fit the profile.
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cheranne
witnessing to my mom,she swore to take a handful of pills if i didn't get out of TWI!!!
i was so new and was told this was a adversary attacking me for taking a stand and was told to read Epesians.
(this was also right in the week of jonestown suicide)
Having done all to stand(i thought) I quit college,got kicked out of the house,disowned from my family
(except my dad who would leave the backdoor open incase I may need food)what a nice man,for doing that.
It was really sick,not to mention how I was so against the religon(which was catholic)what a mess(sorry mom)
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fooledagainII
I remember I was out witnessing once with someone from my twig and we came across a limping dog. So we decided to call the dog over to us and pray for him. We closed our eyes and my brother in Christ gave this long prayer for this dog. He prayed for his legs, his happiness and everything else under the sun for this dog. When we opened our eyes this dog was nowhere to be found.
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GeorgeStGeorge
My twig went witnessing at a frat bar on the U of Ill. campus some January. I started talking with a couple of sorority girls (of course) and brought up the Bible. One of them opined, "Isn't this a strange thing to be talking about in a bar?" I asked, "What would you like to talk about?" She said, "I don't know. What we did on our Christmas vacation, or something." "Okay, what did you do on your Christmas vacation?" "Nothing." "Okay, then let's talk about God!"
They didn't come to fellowship.
And I didn't get their phone numbers.
George
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copenhagen
We were doing the door to door thing when we came across this nice gal.
She seemed to like everything we said but would not agree to come that
night or the next.
We spent about one hour with her unfolding the great truths of PFAL.
We were so convinced it was spiritual or a spiritual influnce keeping her
from coming to hear the greatness of Gods word that we went back
to fight for her.
We showed up at here door the next day only to be greated by her husband
who opned the door with a gun in his hand pointing at us.
He went on to tell us we gave his wife nightmares and thought we were crazy.
A few words were exchanged with the understanding if we ever came by again we
would be shot.
copenhagen
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BURFORD
Wausau, WI 1975-1976. We went out door - to - door witnessing at night, when it had to be 0 to 20 below. Well, of course, very few people opened their doors that night.
One did, ten minutes later, we were in a cop car, going to the police station.
Once the police figured out what we were about, they figured we were harmless, let us go, and actually gave us a ride back home.
The home in question was the police chief's house, and as his wife was the one who answered the door, I do not believe she was too happy with us.
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ChasUFarley
There we were, on the WOW field in Nashville, TN ('92-'93)...
Hubby (version 1.0) and I were with our team at the Maharry Medical College campus, going door to door.
We came across what looked like a dorm and thought we'd hit pay dirt when we found the door was unlocked. There was also a guy in a very casual clothing (pj's and robe), reading a book or newspaper.
Hubby (1.0), who thought he was going to save the world, started witnessing to this guy. The guy started out being just annoyed with us but that quickly escalated into anger and worse. The guy was Muslim - and had a nasty opinion of Christians.
Before we knew it, we were fleeing from the building with this guy s-c-r-e-a-m-i-n-g behind us. It was a high drama moment for sure.
As we exited the building, I looked up and saw a sign over the door way - the building wasn't a dorm... it was the Psychiatric Ward of the University's hospital!
How INSANE was that?!
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Jim
And we have a winner!
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