Jehovah's Witnesses Come A Callin'

I was lying on the couch this morning, about to have my neck cracked by Alba (which feels awesome, by the way), when I heard a knock on the screen door. I thought it was my next door neighbor, Jenny, but when I turned to look toward the door, there was no one there.

Whoever it was, I was sure they didn't know us, because instead of peaking through the screen door like Jenny would have done, or remaining conspicuously in front of it, they stood off to the side so I couldn't see who was there.

Annoyed, I got up to answer the door and two men were standing there, impeccably dressed and groomed like a couple of young congressional interns.

"Does anyone here speak Spanish?" one of them asked.

Yep...they're promoting some political agenda, I thought.

"Well...Alba does--" and I turn around hoping to pawn them off on Alba so I wouldn't have to be the rude one and shoo them away.

But Alba was quick on the uptake: "I'll be in the shower," she said, and hurried to the bathroom.

Unfazed, the man on the left continued: "Well, we're here with the Jehovah's Witnesses...." and he continued into his spiel about cars and engineers and how engineers are the best people to tell you about the cars, and blah, blah, blah.

Dammit, I should have known. Their blue shirts fooled me. They were in disguise. Not the usual arm-length, button-up white shirts and ties. These were blue. I could see now the black Bibles in their left hands, and a few tracts sticking out of one of the outside pockets.

For a moment, I was worried he would pull one out and start talking about a cartoon drawing with lions laying in fields and people building a house in the background, while others were harvesting a crop. "Doesn't that look idealic?" he would say. And "Wouldn't you like to live like this?"

Then I would be forced to say "Hell, no! That looks like too much work to me! Who wants to spend eternity tilling the fields and building log cabins?" But he didn't pull out a tract. He went on talking about how if God was the engineer of us, then wouldn't he be the best person to tell us everything we need to know about ourselves?

Meanwhile, I'm holding the screen door open, and several flies were taking full advantage of the situation and making a bee line for the kitchen counter and the remains of my breakfast salad, and the only thing I can think of is how the hell can I get rid of these guys without being overly rude?

Why am I so damn polite? They interrupted my day, not the other way around!

Well, I couldn't let this go on long, and by this time, the guy was trying to indoctrinate me about how God told us we would live forever right here on this earth. Don't know how that would happen, but the last thing I wanted to do was have a philosophical argument with an indoctrinated Jehovah's Witness.

So I simply said, "Well, I've read the Bible and I know what it says, and I'm not really interested in anything you have to offer."

They were polite. One was the talker, the other the listener. Maybe he was a trainee, and the talker was showing him the ropes. But they left and proceeded to try and convert Jenny next door.

When Alba got out of the shower, she told me the story of Adriana upstairs, who's from Columbia and bi-lingual. When the Jehovah's Witnesses knocked on her door one time, she tried to fake them out:

"Lo siento, pero no hablo Engles! Yo no hablo Engles!"

Well, the Jehovah's Gringo was prepared: "Oh, okay. Soy de Jehovah's Witness y...."

Man, they're prepared for everything these days. Maybe I'll make up some language next time to fool them:

"Blo hopper be dop dang row. Be bop yo bam. He-n-do-bop." And I'll just keep talking in scat, looking confused, until they give up and walk away!