Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Lambs of God

So, Saturday afternoon, there was a knock on the front door. When I answered it, about a half dozen young girls stood on the porch with plastic bags in their hands.

"Would you care to donate some canned goods to the food bank?" one of them asked.

"Sure," I said. "Hold on."

I went and fetched a couple cans of beans and some pears. I brought them back and put them in one of the bags. I thought I had done my good deed for the weekend, and that my transaction with these young philanthropists was complete. But, no.

Another youngster piped up through her braces. "Is there anything you'd like us to pray for you for?"

I think I did a Scooby Doo, "Hrrr-uh?" Quickly recovering, I mumbled, "Uh, no, thanks."

But, she wasn't done. "Do you know where you'll go when you die?"

This time, a Shaggy, "Zoinks!" Followed by, "No, I don't."

She had me, she thought. "Would you like to know?"

I looked at her, as kindly as possible, and said, "You can't know, and I really don't want to talk about this with you. Thanks."

And, they turned and left. Leaving me disturbed for several minutes. I felt like somehow, these proselytizing babies were being used by someone. Had I been conversion-missioned by a twelve year old? Was I supposed to engage in cosmological, philosophical, spiritual, dogmatic, ecclesiastical, and eschatological discourse with a child? Whose idea was that? It made me feel creepy, but not because of anything I did. I felt creepy about whomever organized that little children's crusade dressed up like a charitable excursion.

I mean, I'm just saying.

3 comments:

AMVB said...

Last night my friend D told me that he recently got into an argument with a 7-year-old girl in Brooklyn. She'd apparently kicked trash into the street, and he talked to her about picking it up. After some back and forth in which she said that he should pick up the trash if it bothered him so much and what was he going to do about it, he apparently ended the stalemate by replying, "I guess I'll just be the better person than you are."

Maybe we should all pray for my friend D.

You go, not getting into a similar-type discourse with the lambs on your doorstep!

I present a funny situation here, but really this whole thing you wrote about is unsettling. Yikes.

Anon AMVB

Unknown said...

you should have given them a really old sandwich...that is if you'd still had one lying around.

ATR said...

Yeah...a sandwich. I wish I would have thought of that. We could have had a discussion of where the sandwich went after IT died.