Last Sunday I experienced a door-to-door experience which can only be deemed truly disturbing. Actually, I think it was Saturday. Yes, thinking back on it, the day definitely was a Saturday, but I guess my point is, that opening the door only to be greeted by two Jehovah’s Witnesses was ever as disconcerting on this Saturday as it would have been had it occurred on a Sunday, or any other day for that matter. And not because the doorbell rang and made me jump and spill the water I was pouring into my glass onto the counter, and not because opening the door I saw two strangers smiling at me with strange vacant expressions on their faces, and not even because the two strangers smiling with strange vacant expressions on their faces turned out to be two Jehovah’s Witnesses who wanted to discuss the possibilities of accumulating “eternal knowledge” on this earth and to point me in their direction, or rather, the right direction .
I didn’t take offense at them interrupting my water consumption and my visit with my grandmother, and I didn’t take offense at their apparent lack of interest regarding my own pre-established religious background and spiritual tendencies. What did bother me, and left me reeling and a bit frightened, and having to check to make sure my mouth wasn’t noticeably agape, was that one of Jehovah’s two witnesses standing in front of me was a little boy, a little boy no older than seven.
A little boy in an adorable and yet obviously uncomfortable grey tweed suit who proceeded to look at me with his innocent wee face and like a little trained monkey regurgitate a speech that he could not have written because it sounded as if an adult over the age of thirty had written it, and wouldn’t you know, an adult over the age of thirty was standing just paces behind the little witness, beaming proudly and patting his back and encouraging him to keep going when he looked longingly at her at various points during his “speech” after he stumbled over words no seven-year-old should be forced to pronounce. After he choked on phrasing too complicated and contrived for a little boy who should be outside in the Saturday afternoon sunshine in shorts and a t-shirt, playing in the dirt and picking his nose, and not peddling something he can’t possibly even understand at the ripe old age of SEVEN just so no one will want to slam the door on the the tract-toting behind of the woman beaming eerily in the background.
Because how can you tell a seven-year-old that you aren’t interested? How can you slam the door in a seven-year-old’s face when he keeps pushing for you to take documents on becoming a Jehovah’s Witness that you do not want, but thank you anyway? The answer: you can’t. It’s like frowning when the little boy in a scout’s uniform and the little campfire girl with pigtails in her hair bound to your door excitedly, and then proceeding to tell them that you aren’t going to buy a box of their cookies, thereby leaving them feeling dejected and wondering why you hate them and why you hate cookies. And besides, it was certainly not this little boy’s fault that he was dressed in an uncomfortable tweed suit and had memorized his mother’s spoonfed lines and was nervous and scared and SEVEN.
And even more than I wanted to grab the little boy and steal him away from the Dark Side and transport him safely and unscarred back to the playground where he belongs, or at least back to books about bugs and planes and cars and ponies and even Barbies if he wants, even more than that, I found myself wanting to punch the beaming adult behind him in the ovaries, right in the baby-makers, and tell her that manipulating children is best done in private and could she please leave me out of it.
And after punching her in the ovaries I would most surely think it appropriate to yell something like “Can I get a WITness?!” so that she would know that while I may not be inherently righteous, at least I am clever.
It was here, while waiting for my brother, that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books. But I knew a story had begun, perhaps long ago near the sound of water. And I sensed that ahead I would meet something that would never erode so there would be a sharp turn, deep circles, a deposit, and quietness.
-from A River Runs Through It → Read more...
I posted a picture of him for a silly Instagram-related game and found him waiting for me in my dreams, something which occurs so rarely it still explodes solidly-constructed dams inside me each time I see his face, mustached and smiling at mine just the way he always did, just the way I always remember him. As usual he didn’t say much, not anything I could hear or remember, but he was there and I knew it, and when I → Read more...
I have words washed out to sea. Words ushered quietly from my lips to my fingertips, waiting patiently for the right tide, for the moon to bring my stories alive.
I have words being reviewed, words accepted and words rejected, and I’m clinging to my favorite lines, fighting for them, and it feels strange and new and exhilaratingly infuriating, this tug-of-war of wills and how the slightest bit of caving can make me feel like I’m flirting with abandoning the sanctity → Read more...
[Alternately titled: Story, The Second: The Girl Who Moved To Washington State]
It began simply. A direct message on Twitter first, followed by texts; those texts, in turn, begat plans. With those plans came anxiety and apprehension – I didn’t know you, not your face or your voice or anything else, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to – but also something exciting, a strange and unexpected hope hovering quietly on the horizon. And then we met, conversed and laughed → Read more...