feynites:

prokopetz:

I just got one of those door-to-door evangelists, and I’ve gotta admit I kind of feel sorry for them – their pitch is, like, hilariously ineffective because they just don’t seem to realise that most folks have no point of reference on what they’re selling. It’s like watching someone try to convince people that they should play Pokémon, except they’re operating under the unexamined assumption that everyone everywhere is already familiar with the basics and just can’t decide which generation is best, so they’re standing there banging on about the finer points of the type matchup grid to an audience whose knowledge of and interest in the franchise begins and ends with “the monster goes in the ball”.

I once completely stumped an evangelist when I was a kid because he asked me if I knew who Jesus was, and I said ‘no’.

“No?” the poor dude repeated, looking dubiously at his companion.

Me being myself, I immediately doubled-down.

“No,” I repeated. “Who’s Jesus?”

This summoned up a long silence, followed by the evangelists asking to speak to my mother or father.

“They’re not here,” I said. Technically also a lie, but my father was sleeping from working nights, and I wasn’t going to wake him up for this.

“Well… um… so Jesus… Jesus Christ? Our Lord and Saviour, Who is the Son of God?” the chatty evangelist tried, looking at me like I was some kind of alien puzzle.

“You mean Hercules?” I responded, for some reason. I still don’t know why.

Another long silence. We were clearly off-script. The chatty evangelist started trying to go through the ‘died for your sins’ spiel, and for some reason, all I could think to do was roll with the angle that I was legitimately unfamiliar with even the concept of Jesus, and had somehow reached the age of nine or ten with only a thorough education on Greek Mythology to serve me in a religious context.

I think the second guy was well aware that I was full of shit, because he kept covering his mouth like he was going to laugh, but the first guy was just caught somewhere between horror and a weird kind of excitement. Like he’d been waiting to finally meet someone who didn’t know ANYTHING about Jesus, just so he could be the first to explain the whole Christianity deal.

Anyways long story short I ended up just trying to tell them all about the Trials of Hercules, like we were just exchanging fun facts we knew about demigods, while the first guy was just adamantly trying to be like ‘no that stuff is made up, but the Jesus stuff is true’, until his friend finally was just like ‘thank you have a good day’ and closed the door and made him leave.