We were in the middle of creating what we visualized would be a quaint, European-looking pathway up one side of our house when I found these neat stepping stone mats from Viva Terra. I've ordered from Viva Terra many times in the past and have always gotten great quality merchandise from them, so it never occurred to me that they would sell anything that was...well...junk.

I was delighted when the mats arrived - they were exactly what I had in mind. It took a couple of weeks before we had the pathway built and ready for the mats. When I laid them out, they looked like this:

Then, as things that are used outside tend to do, they got wet. Mind you, the Viva Terra web site SHOWS these mats being used outdoors and SUGGESTS you use them in your "garden footpaths." Maybe that's only for folks who live in a moisture impermeable bio dome, because here's what our Viva Terra River Stepping Stone mats looked like after a couple of weeks of use:

By the time the first stone dropped off (an omen of the nudist philosophy all of the mats were soon to adopt), I had already ordered more in order to fill in the walkway, so that people weren't leaping wildly from mat to mat like the guy in Pitfall. (Atari, anyone?)

I called Viva Terra today in order to rectify the situation. The customer service agent read me a pre-written script informing me that while my recent orders of defective stepping stone mats would be eligible for return, the first set would not, as they fell outside of their 30-day return policy window.

When I explained that the mats had sat, all shiny and new, in their boxes for two weeks before being put outside, where they took another two weeks to begin begin disintegrating before my very eyes, she replied that Viva Terra would offer to send its customers a tube of eco-friendly adhesive so we can glue the mats back together.

Let's analyze this. We are so aware that this is a cruddy product that falls apart that we actually have GLUE that we are shipping to customers so that they can stick the defective product back together? Seriously?

"Rooms to Go customer service? How may I help you?"

"Uh, yeah... Um, I bought a...recliner from you guys? A few weeks ago? We haven't had it for that long and have only, you know, sat in it to watch "Grey's Anatomy" and reclined it to take a few naps. But yesterday, the arms fell off of it!"

"We're sorry you have experienced problems with one of our recliners, sir. As a valued Rooms to Go customer, we would like to offer you a complimentary bottle of Rooms to Go adhesive with which you can glue the arms back onto your piece of furniture..."

Yeah. With any other product, that would sound pretty damned absurd.

Which is what I argued with the customer service rep. She held on to her script like a bulldog with its teeth in the throat of...a Viva Terra customer service script. In the end, all I got was an agreement to refund the newer defective merchandise I ordered, minus shipping, plus a 10% refund of the initial defective merchandise.

I'm on the fence about the company. In all the years I've shopped with Viva Terra, I've never had the slightest problem with anything I've purchased. But this one bureaucratic, powerless-to-help-the-customer, stick-to-the-script experience with their customer service may have just lost them any of my future business. Unless sometime, months or years from now, I develop an uncontrollable need to have a bath mat made of plastic pull tabs from milk cartons. I mean, where else can you find something like that?

Dirtying up the brainwashing...

I just finished reading Kyria Abraham's book, I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales from a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing. (Find it on Amazon here.)

It's funny; I had considered writing a blog--sort of like my earlier posting on religion--documenting the memories of my Jehovah's Witness childhood in a humorous way. A couple of weeks later I find this book and discover that it's been done for me!

This book couldn't have described my childhood more perfectly if I'd written it myself, apart from some of the specific details from age 17 on (Kyria struggled to get out of a loveless teenage marriage; I came out of the closet and left my hometown for a few years to gain enough strength to deal with the mountain of JW literature my family was showering me with). I was laughing out loud as I read so many of the EXACT phrases I was taught to use as arguments for the various JW beliefs, from not celebrating holidays to avoiding questionable music and television shows.

And the Smurfs... I had forgotten about my Smurf deprivation. All my friends laughed because I had to avoid--of all things--servants of Satan who were masquerading as adorable blue cartoon creatures. My brother and I were even forbidden to watch "Scooby Doo," despite our impassioned arguments that the ghosts on "Scooby Doo" weren't REAL ghosts, but only a crotchety old man running around in a Halloween mask. (Thinking of it that way, you'd think JW parents would steer clear of "Scooby Doo" because it features creepy potential sexual predators, rather than the whole ghost argument.)

(Every Jehovah's Witness's worst nightmare:  a giant Smurf attacking crowds of children whose parents were lax in their home cartoon monitoring.)  

The book was humorous, as I got to look back at the arguments, the beliefs--even the Kingdom Hall decor (which I'd forgotten about!) through the eyes of an adult. I couldn't help but feel some bitterness, though, as it also reminded me of the lingering results so many experience from this sort of religious upbringing--the anxiety/depression, social ineptitude, lack of education and general lack of preparation for the real world. I was an honor roll student who was taking college prep courses for no reason other than I was smart enough to take them and do well. I wasn't really being "prepped" for anything except going door-to-door hawking fundamentalist literature.  I won't even begin discussing the years of anxiety attacks that it took forever to get under control.  


Despite it all, I'm a (mostly) well-adjusted adult (the adult part is up for debate, depending on whether or not I'm in the middle of an XBox zombie-shooting session at the moment) with a college degree in English literature. It was a long road to get here, however, and I do battle feelings of resentment over that. And THEN I go all Eckhart Tolle, take a deep breath and let it go...

I remember when it first occurred to me that I had spent a large portion of my childhood as a member of a cult. My wife and I were watching interviews with the women of the FLDS church, shortly after the raid in Texas. My wife commented on how she couldn't understand how anyone would just swallow the things that these women were taught without questioning them. Meanwhile, I could perfectly understand why these women simply accepted such absurd beliefs without questioning a thing. To question is wrong, I told her, because it opens you up to evil, outside influences. So many of the things these women said echoed the type of rhetoric I was taught growing up--I was stunned.

So here I am as an adult. My "I Was a Childhood Cult Member" blog has been rendered unnecessary. Truthfully, I'm glad I got the benefit of reading my story without having to relive it enough to write it. It was just as therapeutic without being overwhelming. I still feel the old anxiety creeping around the edges when I start thinking about it all. I guess you don't go through that sort of brainwashing for half of your life without it leaving some traces. That's why it's important that people share their stories. Get out the real truth, you guys. Get out the info, the dirt, the facts, the real content without the fundamentalist shine--we've got some brainwashing to undo.