Please, please go away

The door-to-door G*d salespeople have been out in force. They exhaust me. First of all, we have way too many inside dogs (who do not always use their inside voices), for anyone expecting conversation to knock on my door & then hang around. "Deafening" does not really cover it.

& when I said knock I meant knock. The doorbell died years ago & it took us a long, long time to notice. That is how much I want to talk to someone who does not know better than to come to the front door.

The truth is I KNOW when someone is there because I can hear all that barking, too. You don't have to bang on the door, lean on your car horn, shout loudly over THE BARKING DOGS. The barking dogs are the clue to your presence.

It is always possible I am not there to hear the dogs, in which case banging on the door, honking your horn & shouting almost certainly will not work. If I cannot hear the dogs, I cannot hear you.

But there have been stalwarts who insist on waiting & waiting & waiting until the noise of the dogs is more than I can handle & I answer the door. These people always want to talk about Jesus. Funnily enough, no one tries that hard to deliver a package or the word of Muhammad (or Abraham or Isaac or Jacob for that matter). It is always Jesus.

After years of my saying "no thanks" & A saying more (any mythology outside of Sinbad movies holds no interest for him; I once had to explain to my book club that he thinks there is just the narrowest of gaps between people who go to church on Easter to humor their mothers & snake handlers), the door-to-door G*d salespeople stopped dropping by.

True story about A: he was stopped on campus & asked if he would accept a copy of the New Testament. He said no & then asked if the solicitor would like a copy of The Origin of the Species? He said no, too. Then A asked if he thought he should be illegally taking up a parking space that people pay $100s of dollars a year to use? That is stealing, right? One of the big Ten? Believe it or not, the guy packed up & left.

But I digress. I was saying the door-to-door G*d people are back. Some time ago, the pastureland across the street was earmarked for luxury homes. Four swanky models went up, the swankiest directly across from our driveway & listed for up to 1.4 million. We laughed our asses off. Until someone bought it.

Who would buy a 1.4 million dollar luxury entertainment-style house in the middle of nowhere? Why the pastor/deacon/whatever of a large new-testament-is-truth, we-go-to-heaven-faster-if-we-convert-more-infidels style church. Apparently, Jesus wants you to have the coolest pool party in the neighborhood.

& then they were back. Every week or so, a pair of little old ladies would stand on our front step, waiting to be torn apart by mad dogs. & this is how the conversations would go:

"Good morning"
"WHAT?""
"Have you heard the word?"
"WHAT?"
"The word of G*d?"
"WHAT?"

At least I think that is how it went. I really could not hear much over all that barking. I would toy with the idea of letting the dogs escape, but I do not want to get charged with assault or my dogs destroyed (although if you are standing on my front step, trying to talk to me about Jesus & my dog attacks you, isn't that a Sign?).

Seeing as how I got e-mails for the entry about saints & shoveling horse-sh*t, I am sure to get e-mails about this. In my defense, at least I am not standing on your doorstep reciting this to you.