posted 2007/06/19 at 20:33
Yesterday as I was downstairs fixing my lunch an SUV pulled up just a tiny bit into the driveway and two women around my mother's age came out. One of them had a weathered black book tucked in her hand, and it didn't take me any time all to recognize what this meant. I was all prepared to go duck into my parents' bedroom to wait the ladies out (and hope that my spaghetti didn't turn to mush in the meantime), but Mom called my sister down from the office to deal with the ladies instead. Apparently this is about the fifth or sixth time these particular ladies have come to our home, and every time my sister has dealt went out and had some kind of conversation with them. I kind of avoided the conversation -- I had lunch to cook, after all -- but one of those ladies said "God help ..." at the start of nearly every sentence she made, often quite loudly. When my spaghetti was ready, I got it around and hightailed it back up here to my bedroom as quickly as I could.
I don't like it when people try to get me to convert to their religion, and even if there weren't a general consensus in Wicca not to actively recruit other members, I wouldn't try to do it just because I don't like doing things to other people that I don't like being done to myself. Not only does it annoy me when people go door-to-door -- especially to my door -- trying to get people to change their religion, but in my experience talking to others who've been on the receiving end of this kind of stuff, it's also a nearly-entirely fruitless process. If you want to convince other people that your religion is the best religion, it seems to me like the best way to do that is to live as healthy and as happy a life as you possibly can and lead by example, not go door-to-door and tell people that their souls are condemned to eternal damnation and that you'll still "pray for them" anyway. Well, that's the best legal way to convince people, anyway.
Even though I freely admit that these people annoy me, though, I'm not that happy with my sister going out there and, as she described it, "having fun" with them. I don't think that trying to out-annoy anyone is ever a wise course of action in the first place, and given that these ladies keep showing up for more, I don't think that it's proven to be particularly effective for my sister. If we want these ladies to stop coming on our property -- and that seems to be what the rest of us in the family want -- we should just say as much and threaten to call the cops on them for trespassing if they ever come back. I certainly understand how my sister could find her discussions with them entertaining, and there certainly was a time in my life when I would have joined her in that, but even if these ladies are annoying the heck out of us, I still think it's disrespectful for my sister to "have fun" with them.
I also want to note here that while these ladies were talking with my sister, I saw what had to be a male child of no more than twelve years shifting around in the back seat of the SUV. In addition, I want to note that it was over 90 degrees out with sunny skies when these ladies were visiting us, and my sister said that the ladies did not leave the motor (and thus the air conditioning) of their SUV running for the fifteen to twenty minutes that they were on our front porch. If I see that kid in the back of that SUV the next time those ladies visit us, I will be calling the cops on them for a hell of a lot more than just trespassing.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon