“You think that because you’re bored.”

That’s what an elder told me when I found out that my father (also an elder) was smoking. Let me go back to the beginning of this whole story and give you some context.

Before becoming a JW, my father was a heavy smoker (plus some drugs and a lot of alcohol). He joined “the borg” in his twenties. Anyway, fast-forward to when I was about 20–22, roughly ten years ago.

So my father is an elder, and he constantly smells like cigarettes. When he pets the cat, its fur smells like smoke. His clothes smell like smoke. His fingers are yellow from smoking. His breath smells like smoke. Basically, he smokes, and it’s obvious (even my mother points it out from time to time). Then one day, in his office, I find a pack of cigarettes and a bunch of cigarette butts, all crushed in the exact same way — making it clear that only one person smoked all of them: him.

Being the good little JW I was back then (even though I didn’t believe all that nonsense, I was trying to follow the rules…), I confronted my father about what I had found. It was awful. He turned completely pale, swore he didn’t smoke, claimed the pack wasn’t his, and then spent the whole evening and night crying in bed, curled up like a baby. The next day, he apologized, hugging me and crying. Horrible… it was just horrible.

He then went on to tell his best friend — also an elder — what had happened. I think he wanted to get ahead of things, just in case I intended to report him (which I absolutely didn’t).
That friend called me right after to say the sentence you read above:
“But you’re unemployed right now… Maybe you’re bored and you made up this whole story to keep yourself busy.”

ARE YOU F***ING KIDDING ME????
I’ve never heard anything so stupid…

After all that, my father never smelled like cigarettes again, and nothing was done about it — no committee, no downgrade, nothing. Those things are only for the “little people,” the regular publishers. Ugh. What a bunch of hypocrites these JWs are.

At least this experience made me realize one thing very clearly: elders are liars, manipulators, and they always protect each other.