What is all the fuss about?
When I was still Assimilated (i.e. still in the BORG, but wanting out every second of that time), there was so much emphasis put on microphone handling that it was almost unreal. It was almost as if the microphones on their long poles were some sort of spiritual conductor that could electrocute you with God's spirit and lead you to become a Ministerial Servant or an Elder. Hey, that sounds exactly like the process that you use to become Annointed! Whodathunkit?
AFAIK, all Ministerial servants ever seemed to do in my Congregation was carry around all the Field Service territory stuff. This carrying about of the Field Service Stuff was very, very crucial to them, and you did not dare rip them off about it by making passing references to the size of their manhood being inversely proportional to the number of not-at-homes, lest you be counselled for "berating an older man".
Truly, these occupations befit men (only men, no women allowed, seems women are not fit to carry around microphones, God has clearly decreed that the fairer sex is limited to things like popping out babies and being chained to stoves, even though stoves were not technically around in their present form when God supposedly made his decrees and the Prophets wrote them down) who are reaching out for higher status in the Congregation.
Why else would one want to carry around microphones? Nobody could just pitch in and help out - that would have been viewed as blasphemy. Why on Earth is so much importance attached to this supposed "privilige" (a Dub-specific word I find impossible to spell right, let alone comprehend the way they use it ) of carrying around rather ordinary looking poles in the Halls?
It's so important to Jehovah that these microphones are carried around only by baptized Brothers in good standing. They never asked ME to carry around microphones. Strangely enough, initially, after I got baptized, I thought that I would get to do it. The novelty of the idea soon wore off, but hey, it was better than sitting and staring blindly at the pages of my Watchtower magazine every Sunday, pretending to see lines of code on my computer instead of lines of gibberish written by some guy in Brooklyn with serious cognitive dissonance issues.
This is one little aspect of Dubland that most outsiders find extremely difficult to comprehend. When you describe these sort of goings-on to them, they make sure that the next time they see a Dub heading towards them with lethal doctrinal intent, that they step out of the way and lock their doors sharpish. I've probably succeeded in decruiting hundreds of people with pointed remarks aimed at the friendly neighbourhood Dubs.
Dubs are actually very rare creatures where I live right now, primarily due to the fact that I live in a house that has it's own 24/7 guards and a gate that they are hired exclusively to watch like hawks, South Africa being a dangerous place and the equipment stored here being extremely valuable. But this changes whenever I visit my mom, who lives in a more suburban area than I currently do. At the moment in South Africa, Dubs are finding it harder and harder to do their supposedly life-changing work. Jehovah is allowing Satan to make things pretty hard for them by making very large fractions of the population move into cluster home villages surrounded by 3 meter high concrete fences and guarded by what at first glance appear to be military detachments. I've actually seens Dubs attempting to Dubify and Assimilate some guards at these places, obviously trying to get into bed with them so that they will let the Dubs into the complexes, but the guards have explicit orders not to allow travelling salesmen into the premises, and especially not if they offer the hope of everlasting life to the guards
So anyway, back to the microphones thing. Another bizarre fact of the whole microphone-handler business is that even if you were to be a 13 year old boy, in a Congregation filled with exactly one Elder and 200 very mature Christian women pimped up and ready for their weekly dose of Tower, you would still be given the microphone carrying assignment. Yes, it seems that women are not good enough to carry around Jehovah's microphones. God, they might bump into the women's breasts, and that would certainly be a tragedy. Wouldn't want to disturb the processes Jehovah has set into motion inside those breasts, now would we? And what if the poles got stuck on their bra straps or something?
Such is the irony of Dub life. These rules are applied in a super-strict fashion, and are considered not as rules, but as LAWS by Dubs. Dubs will vaccilate and sneer and do all sorts of supposedly "worldly" things, but they are doing it in a Dub way, so that's perfectly OK. During the last few weeks of my "tenure" at the Hall, just before I reached my watershed moment when I thought "SCREW THIS, I WANNA LAY CHICKS WITHOUT FEAR OF RECRIMINATION, DAMNIT", people started giving me all sorts of interesting looks when I walked into the Hall. These looks varied between outright pity from some of the less snakelike Dubs who I actually liked, to looks that would have made a grown Water Buffalo change it's underwear several times in a row.
Also, just before I left, I was about to be promoted to the status of Microphone Handler Extraodinaire, but sadly, I was given a 5 minute "talk" for the Theocratic Ministry School (bit of a misnomer there, since you rarely get even 5 minutes with a "householder" in the Dub industry - 2 seconds and a hasty "NOT INTERESTED" is more common), and I slipped the tiny, unnoticeable slip into my thin, comfortable Field Service bag and completely forgot about it. One month later, this sort-of faithful Dub guy was sitting as near as possible to the backmost row, as per my instructions from the Elders in humility and so on, getting ready for the first song of the meeting by closing my eyes and imagining myself on a beach very, very far away from the dastardly sound of any Kingdom Melody, when an Elder came up to me and tried to confirm with me that I was ready to give my talk.
Needless to say, I shot up out of my chair in great alarm just as the first few bars of that dreaded melody "We're Jehovah's Witnesses" began to creak out of the abysmally low-quality speaker system of the Hall, and after some frenzied questioning, I ascertained that I was supposed to be giving a talk that night. Well, I have never felt worse in my life, apart from that time when I woke up naked and covered in dew one Sunday morning with a sore ass in the garden of a stranger who grew lots of cactuses and who I didn't recognise on sight. Have you ever seen a (semi) faithful Brother trying to compose his 5 minute talk in, uh, 5 minutes? That was fun! Great fun for the whole family, indeed! In fact, my Sister was enjoying the sight of me getting all sorts of glares from my Father that hinted at dark and malevolent actions involving curfews later on in the evening when we got home. In fact, if looks could've screwed, my Father would probably have impregnated me with triplets. I think my Mother actually hissed a couple of times, she was so mad. Luckily, no one noticed this, since Dubs tend to hiss a lot, and they are also fond of running about in your local neighbourhood mumbling things like "goatgoatgoatgoat", especially some of the more dedicated Special Pioneers.
So there I got up on the platform and gave my speech. And I got a G for it, too! The Elder was blissfully unaware that I had concocted the speech out of thin air and a borrowed pen (my Mother had banned me from taking pens to meetings after that time I gave Jehovah dreadlocks in the Revelation book).
Yep, Dub life was pretty painful. Anybody else care to share their embarrassing meeeting moments?
Regards,
SYN