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Have You Considered Jesus?
One of the joys of a flexible schedule and working from home is the late-morning doorbell.
It could be a neighbor asking for a jump because her car's headlights turn on by themselves, randomly.
I could open the door on a disadvantaged kid trying to guilt me into buying candy or magazines or pest extermination.
Recently, I've been met by older, semi-professional men who are bursting at the seams to tell me about how much money I'll be saving with the new fiber-optic HD TV, phone, and Internet services. I tell them we're not interested. They ask leading questions along the line of "Don't you think that only a total dipshit doesn't want to save money?" I explain that we don't have cable. It's kind of fun to watch the sales-pitch flowchart peter out in their heads. Their eyes go blank. Their chins wag a little in silence.
Yesterday, the doorbell summoned a clean-cut Aryan boy in a dress shirt and bright yellow tie. His eyes gleamed either from religious zeal or intravenous meth. Then I saw the Bible clutched to his chest.
Yes. We do go to church. In Los Altos. We're Catholic, really bad Catholics. No, no one's ever shown me in the Bible why I'm going to heaven. Thanks anyway, young man whose eyes are about to pop out of your head, but, though I'm standing here in grungy shorts and tattered T-shirt, I'm actually working, not drowning my mid-morning sorrows with Miller Lite and shouting at Judge Judy. Yeah, thanks for the mini-pamphlet. Next time I smoke some crank or decide to go Baptist, I'll look you folks up.