I’m pretty sure I’ve told it at one of the Dopefests, Palmyra–I may have told it on the Board in the past, but if so it was long ago. It’s one of my favorite stories. 
Balance, fabulous story!
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, probably the least religious of all the large metropolitan areas in the United States, so I have not been proseltyzed to much. When I was eight, though, and my family moved to the town I grew up in, our new next-door neighbor recommended that I go to the day camp that she sent her son to. It was at a church, but heck, lots of stuff is held at churches. She did not tell them it was religious, and my parents didn’t realize we were doing bible study for at least a couple weeks. I insisted on sticking with it, because I had made friends, etc., etc. My parents were pretty pissed off at my neighbor, though. She tried to give me a Bible when I graduated from high school, but I politely refused. She’s really very nice, but I’m a Jewish Green, and she’s a Republican Christian fundamentalist Cuban refugee (really, what more could you want?). I try to avoid political discussions with her.
In high school, I had a number of good LDS friends, and asked one of them to tell me about her religion. She told me that the missionaries could do a better job of it, and I somehow ended up taking what Mormons call the Discussions - a series of 6 mini-courses with the current missionaries. It was actually very interesting. The missionaries didn’t pressure me too much, but they did ask me if I wanted to be baptised. They didn’t seem hurt when I said I didn’t think so. They were very nice guys, and I learned a lot about the LDS church.
Hitting a would-be converter with a dead cat would probably discourage them from trying to convert you. If a dead cat proves insufficient, try a dead dog, such as a Great Dane or a St. Bernard.
When I was nine, one of my brothers converted from catholicism to baptism. He has since convinced one of my other brothers to convert as well. It has all but torn the family apart. They all still get together at family picnics and other get togethers, but only because of that pesky “family” label. During weddings, funerals, anything that happens in a church, my two converted brothers will sit in a pew (for those unfamiliar with churchspeak, a pew is a hard wooden bench) and read THEIR bible for the entire mass. It really makes me sad that they will have very little to do with the majority of my family anymore, even though we make every effort to participate in their church functions. I was the usher at my converted brother’s wedding, for example…
…I myself am what most people would consider catholic. And I am making my motion to sue Kevin Smith any day now, because he basically took my belief system and made money off of it. As long as we love ourselves and our neighbors likewise, does it really matter what form or shape our deity takes? Doesn’t the image of God (or whatever you may call him, since God is English) take on whatever form that culture gave him? What’s to say that God and Allah and Zeus aren’t really the same power, just given different names by entirely different peoples? So, like George Carlin once said, and I paraphrase, pick a religion and go with it. Help that person up instead of taking his lunch money.
“‘Mummy, I woke up this morning, and there was a lincoln log in me sock drawer!’ ‘That’s the story of Jesus!’” -Bill Hicks
Saryl
There’s also this event at my college called “The God Thing” sponsored by one of the local churches. I’ve never been, but mone of my friends described it to me. They play a few clips from some movie that was popular among teens in the last year, discuss it without mentioning Christianity for about five minutes, and then suddenly turn it into a sermon. Example: last year they showed The Matrix, and then the guy said “In this movie Neo must choose between taking the red pill or the blue pill. Well, eight years ago I took the red pill by choosing to accept the love of Jesus Christ blah blah blah.” This year the movie was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; I don’t even want to know how they connected that to Bible-thumping, you’re-going-to-Hell type stuff. Maybe “In this movie, people can fly. And you’ll be able to fly if you renounce Satan?”
This isnt a converting thing but…about two years ago one of my best friends went super-christian and we were talking one night and got into religion. Well after listening to her talk and go on about the love of god or whatever I told her I didnt believe in god. And she started sobbing. (This was the strong leader of our group of friends and the girl who NEVER cried, so it really threw me) When I asked her what was wrong she said she was sad because I wasnt going to go to heaven and she wouldnt see me there and it made her sad. Then she made me promise to let her be the first one to know if and when I came back to god.