I’m all for freedom of religion. I don’t have anything against Jehovah’s Witnesses, say, when I run into them in the grocery store or when I’m driving my minivan and ‘accidentally’ run one of them over. Kidding, okay? I’m kidding. We only have 1 running vehicle and I wouldn’t want to dent it or get blood all over it.
While I’m for freedom of religion for others…I’m also for freedom to be a lazy slug on Saturday mornings and freedom from having to answer the door for someone who wants to come in and have a chat about saving my soul, saving the souls of my husband and children, and the end of the world (it’s right around the corner, don’t you see the signs?!).
Living in a suburb, I’ve gotten used to maybe every-other-month visits from JWs or Mormons or (believe it or not) Baptists. Annoying? Yes. Pit-worthy? Nah. I would just say a polite no thank you, close the door, and that would be the end of it. My current situation, however, just bolted past merely annoying to absolutely fucking ridiculous.
I’m being stalked by 2 little old lady Jehovah’s Witnesses. This has been going on for MONTHS now.
It started at the end of July. It was a Saturday morning. Eight fucking o’clock on a Saturday morning. I was out of bed to see my husband off to work but by no means was I what you could call “awake.” I was sitting on the couch holding a cup of coffee contemplating actually drinking it once I was conscious enough to do so without accidentally pouring it into my ear, and there came a knock at the door.
Thinking that my husband had forgotten something and left his keys in the van I got up and answered. And there is mistake #1. Standing on my porch were 2 ancient women, probably born around the year 3 BC, holding pamphlets. I was there in my full Saturday morning glory…jammies, bedhead, coffee in one hand…and out of the mouth of one of the mummies on my doorstep comes, “Hello, do you have a moment to talk about your soul?”
Had I had full use of all my faculties, I would have just slammed the door and gone back to preparing myself to drink my coffee. Instead, I mumbled something like, “This really isn’t a good time for me, but you ladies have a lovely day.” She held out the pamphlets…and…instead of saying, “You should really give those to someone who will actually read them.” I took them and closed the door. And there, ladies and gentlemen, we have mistake #2.
Fast forward to the Wednesday after the first Saturday…11 a.m. The boys and I had just finished their school work and I was working at my job full-tilt boogie. Knock at the door, dog goes crazy, which makes the boys start screaming at the dog, which makes me start screaming at the boys. Open the door, and you guessed it! Two scary mummy women on my front porch…again. This time I WAS awake and just said, “Not now, ladies.” and closed the door. Later that day when I went out to grab my mail…there were Watchtower magazines shoved into my front door handle.
The Saturday after THAT at 8 fucking o’clock in the morning…same jammies, same state of coma, same cup of coffee…knock at the door, dog barking, kids screaming at dog, me screaming at kids. Mummies on the front porch. One mummy has a rose in a bud vase in her hand and hands it to me and says, “Oh dear, you looked so frazzled last time I came calling that I thought you could use a flower.” And some more fucking pamphlets, of course. I think one of them was about how it’s not good for you to work too much. Me–blink, blink “uh, thanks? I need to get going. Have a nice day.” Mistake #3.
See, now they think they’ve got me. Every Wednesday and every Saturday since then, there have been pamphlets shoved into my door. And apparently, the old-lady-mummy people are ninjas. The dog doesn’t even bark anymore, and my dog (cute, but so very stooooooopid) barks like Freddy Krueger just burst through the front window if someone 3 blocks away closed their car door, but does she bark when the old lady ninjas show up? Nope!
And that’s not even the worst of it. Last Thursday, while I was working, the phone rang and I answered it (duh, what WAS I thinking?) and hear, “Hello, my name this is old-lady-mummy-ninja I was wondering if I could come by and have a chat with you.” The first thing that came to my mind to say was “How in blue FUCK did you get my phone number?!” Then I remembered that she knows our last name (it’s WAS on the mailbox…not anymore) and our address, couldn’t have been too difficult to find. My response was, and I think it was rather straightforward and not rude, “NO old-lady-mummy-ninja you may not come and chat with me. I’m working. And I’m not a Jehovah’s Witness and I’m not going to join your church and if I really wanted to know more about your religion I could find one of your temples or whatever you call them in the yellow pages and saunter on into one and ask any one of you people to tell me whatever I wanted to know.” Her response…“Oh, bless your heart, you must be working very hard. I’ll call on you another day.” :smack: My name for this woman is now “old-lady-mummy-ninja-head-injury-poster-mummy.”
Anyway, I thought that the phone call would be the end of it. Was I wrong? Hell yes, you betcha. I was going out at 9 a.m. today to put some stuff in the mail…goddamn pamphlets!! In my doorhandle!!! No barking dog! No knock on the door!!!
I need some sort of perimeter alarm that just vaporizes these assholes. I’ve done my very best to be polite, but I am rapidly losing my sense of humor about this. Can I get a restraining order against all of them? Short of answering the door naked except for a sign hung around my neck that says “eat me I’m an apple popover” or just pushing these breakable women physically out of my yard, does anyone have any suggestions for me to get rid of them once and for all? I called Orkin, but they don’t handle ninja-mummies.
for the humour-impaired.