I know it’s 11:30 am and all god fearing people should be up and about getting things done. You should be dressed and groomed and ready to meet anyone who comes to your door.
Thing is… I’m not dressed, groomed or all that god fearing. I was just lounging here in my robe, sucking back my coffee and enjoying a smoke when there’s a knock at the door. I was thinking it was the neighbour boy coming over to play with our boys.
I’m am still so fragged from last nights adventures with teething babies I can’t spell proseltiz…prosyletisng… proz… fuck it.
Anyways… a couple of well dressed young men in their twenties were standing there and without breaking stride “Andy” starts selling me some salvation.
Hello?
Do I look like I’m in the mood to be entertaining visitors? How do you like my robe? I got it for Christmas.
Even when I pointed this out to him he kept going like the fucking evangelical energizer bunny. The visually challenged evangelical bunny.
When he finally got it he handed me some reading material and left saying he’d come back next week. I couldn’t very well chase him down considering my attire.
So I guess I’ll have to sit this visually challenged but well meaning guy down and discuss the existance of hell or maybe talk about the wisdom of Mohammed. I’ve got some pamphlets I can give him.
Maybe I can make the “Do not visit this house again” list if I work at it.
Feynn, welcome to every Sunday morning at my old house in Amherst, MA. 11:30? HAH! They used to start ringing doorbells around 9:30 in those parts. I don’t know what it was about our place, but some mornings, we’d get two or three waves of salvation ringing our doorbell.
We developed a new Sunday morning pastime: I had a few books on ancient cults and religions and the like (hey, I was an anthropology major) that we’d leave by the door. Doorbell rings, one of us stumbles to the door and flips the book open, picks a religion/cult/practice, informs the rest of us as to what part we’d be playing this day. Open door, listen to schpiel, invite prosletyzer in for coffee, then prosletyze them back about whatever cult we happened to land upon that morning.
Makes me glad I live in a gated apartment complex. I have never had people come to my door to try to convert me. People here are pretty good about not randomly letting people in who call from the gate.
I found that saying “I’d love to talk, but I’ve got to sacrifice a chicken” usually works.
I once answered the door to two females, one of whom was incredibly beautiful. (If that’s sexist, just assume I was very attracted to her on a genetic level).
Instead of inviting me to a party, they came out with the usual spiel. I listened until I was about to dribble*, then thanked them politely and shut the door.
*Look I’m a bloke, OK. Much of our thinking is not done with our brains
One happy morn, a couple of nice people seeking our salvation stopped on my mom’s doorstep. Bad move. One of my numerous sisters answered the door. The sarcastic sister. The brilliant, sarcastic-with-an-evil-twist sister. She listened to them for a moment, then stopped them, saying “I’ll be right back…”. Closing the door, she kept them waiting for a minute or two, them opened the door again, and with a perfectly straight face tells the nice evangelists “I’m sorry, my Buddha won’t let me listen to you.”, then she bowed deeply, and closed the door in their face, gently.
They stood there for quite a while trying to figure out what to do next. Evedently we were reported as damned beyond redemption, as no evangelists ever returned.
You know, I’ve never once had a problem with this. When the Goddites come calling, I just interrupt and say “I am sorry, but I am afraid we are not interested. We are happy in our current faith. Thank you for your time.” and close the door. What’s so tough about this, anyway?
I’ve always wondered if there ever was someone who sold “No Soliciting” signs door-to-door.
I’ve had missionaries from the LDS church come to my apartment. I was always polite and firm with them, but did make it clear that I was not interested in their particular brand of faith.
For some reason, the first impression was enough. They haven’t been back since, and their only visit was over two years ago. The LDS mission still operates out of the same apartment across the street from mine (I still see a picture of Jesus in the window, and guys in the white shirts, black slacks, and ties coming out every now and then).
A little politeness goes a long way, in my opinion. It can show others that even heathen agnostics like me can be decent people.
But I’ll tell you, if they had come knocking on my door at that hour of the evening, there was no way I would have been polite.
I would have called upon the Powers of Darkness[sup]TM[/sup], and used every one of jarbabyj’s patented cusswords that I could remember. (I really need to make a list of them.)
I would not have been nice.
Fortunately, that’s never happened, and it probably never will. Especially if I have already turned in for the night, for I don’t sleep with my hearing aids on, and when I have them off, you could have the Party of the Millenium outside my bedroom window and I probably wouldn’t stir.
“But I’ll tell you, if they had come knocking on my door at that hour of the evening,”
I re-read the OP after I submitted my last post, and saw that the guy was referring to 11:30 a.m., not p.m.
D’oh! That should teach me not to skim the posts.
My point about having missionaries show up at your door at odd hours still stands though. Anytime before 9:00 a.m. or after 6:00 pm is off limits for unsolicited visitors, as far as I’m concerned.
I wish Mormon missionaries would come knocking on my door! I’ve lived here since 1989 and I haven’t had any proselytizers the whole time! WTF? Is it because I live in the ghetto? Poor people aren’t worth saving? Or have all the missionaries been warned away from me?
I like the way my grandmother handles these people. She lives out in the country, so she can tell when it’s just someone selling something (especially religions). She has a big window next to the front door. She sits there in her easy chair, and looks out the window all day.
When someone comes up to the door that she doesn’t know, she doesn’t answer it. Unless they have a utility uniform or something on.
One time while I was over at her house, two people showed up, and you could tell where they were from by the pamplets in their hands. They knocked, my grandmother just sat there looking at them through the window. They noticed her through the window, so they waved. She waved back, closed the curtains and never did answer the door.
I should note, my grandmother is fairly religious. However, she feels that people shouldn’t sell religion door to door. She thinks it cheapens it.
Secondly, RickJay, that’s pretty much how my family responded to prosth…to um…people who came by selling religion. Except Momma would answer the door holding the collar of our 200 lb. barking slobbering overexcited Great Dane - for some reason no one wanted to get too close to him.
People have been handing out little Jesus cards outside the subway stop in my 'hood lately (and communist newspapers, but that’s a whole other story). They wear t-shirts that say “Don’t Do Drugs…Get High on Jesus!” and ask you if you’d like some “Jesus to go.”
I just tell them “I’m all stocked up, thank you”, and am grateful that they have not seen the need to go door to door early in the morning.
I’ve never had any of these types come to my house, maybe because I live in a small town and the nearest Mormon temple is at least 50 miles away. Either way, I’d probably be pretty quick and firm w/ them.
Soliciter: Hi we’d like to
Me(Upon seeing pamplets): I’m sorry, but I’m very happy with my current faith, thank you anyway. Door close
LadyIce, Your grandmama rocks! I’ll have to try that!
I used to get these folks a lot when I was in college in Arizona. I lived in an apartment complex with creaky wooden decking and staircases, so you could hear when people were coming up and down them. Apparently they had a system of going from left to right (and I was apartment 101, on the extreme left), so I had plenty of time to prepare something.
My favorite was to put on a sidearm and answer the door with it on my hip. And, I’d have a shotgun conveniently in view in my living room. Couple of beer bottles here, bottle of whiskey there. . . I just loved messin’ with 'em!
Once, I had a friend over, and she got this bright idea. She ran into the bedroom, and started disrobing to a relatively suggesting level. I was in the living room, so I lit a few candles, took off my shirt, and popped a porn tape in the VCR. Enter Holy Rollers stage right. . .
They knock, and I answer the door. Two are there, dressed in the typical suits and they spout off something about “God” “Church” “book” “saved”. . . whatever. I ask 'em “Can I help you?” While “Mr Orange” starts on his monologue, Holy Roller “Mr White” gets the idea something’s going on. I can see “Mr White’s” eyes gazing around the place, and I can also see a touch of surprise on his face. My friend’s timing was perfect. She runs out in a pair of shorts and a bra, yelling “Ask 'em if they brought their own rubbers!”
I have never seen a business suit run a 60yd dash in my life.
I used to live in an apartment in one of the largely Spanish-speaking parts of NYC. Jehovah’s Witnesses would come to the door, knock, take one look at me, and ask “Do you speak Spanish?” When I replied, “No, I’m sorry, I don’t” they would apologise and back away. The odd part about this is that the missionaries clearly spoke English perfectly well (they had minimal accents and I had conversations with them on other topics if they happpened to be in the hallway.) So why WEREN’T they trying to convert me? Did they have some special mission to only convert Spanish speakers?
Some religions are weirder than others, though. We kept getting chain plants left on our doorstep. Like chain letters, only in plant form. You were suppossed to feed it tea and sugar and pass it on to your friends when it got big enough. Odd.
One buddy simply told them he didn’t have time to talk as he was getting ready to go to church. When they made the mistake of asking him what church he was going to, he replied, “Church of Satan. Wanna come?” They immediately began backing away from him and saying they couldn’t. He followed this up with, “Come on! We’re having a sacrifice tonight!” What really sent them running for the hills was when he looked at their kids and asked, “Say, are you virgins? We haven’t been able to sacrifice any of them for a long time. Sigh, I guess it goes to show just how well his plan is working.” He’s never been bothered by them since.
My other friend pulled one that only works in limited situations, but’s also funny. He invited them in, acted really interested in their spiel, and then faked a seizure! Since this group happened to be from a church that didn’t believe in doctors, they immediately left.
Of course, one wonders what would happen if someone really did have a seizure, the Goddites bailed and the victim died? Would that be grounds for a lawsuit, since had they called an ambulance the victim might have survived?
One of my co-workers used to be a Witness, and was a part of her husband’s Spanish-speaking congregation. When she first started working with us, she told us “Don’t worry, I won’t try to convert you. All of my literature is in Spanish…”
Uh, but, “dude” it does happen that people die during seizures. They choke on their tongues or other have problems. I worked with a gal whose son had a particularly nasty seizure and it took several hours for the emergency room doctors to get the seizure under control. Had they not gotten it under control, he would have died. I don’t know what the stats are as far as seizure types and fatalities, but it’d only take one incident like I described to have the lawyers licking their chops.
