What Would Jesus Do?

I was walking home from work this evening and saw two young men who, I’m pretty sure if I were my mother, I would say looked very nice. Neat. Clean cut. Clean. Weirdly young and yet incredibly well starched. I couldn’t work it out- had they just come from school? But they looked a bit old for that, and no-one here wears a uniform. Black shoes, black pants, white shirts … I’m sure you can see where I’m heading. By the time we got to the tie, I knew what time it was - it was Jesus time.

Now sometimes the fact that ‘ik spreekt nee Nederlands’ can be mighty handy. However when the Jehovahs spreading the Belgian Word are actually from America and totally up for a chat in the mother tongue, it’s quite easy to concede that perhaps today God actually isn’t on your side. Anyway, I’m not sure exactly what it was; perhaps I was called; perhaps I was feeling vulnerable; perhaps I was hoping they’d carry my groceries; but I have a terrible secret to confess: I spoke with the JW’s for 30 minutes. In public. I’m fairly certain I’m the only woman either of them has ever conversed with who either wasn’t related or hiding behind a sofa.

However, after we’d got through the obligatory acknowledgement of my own fiery future, they were actually very lovely, and the older (about 20) especially was up for a bit of chinwag. It went thus:

Older JW: “What are you doing here where abouts do you live oh you’re from Melbourne? I’ve got a friend in Sydney etc. etc…”

At which point, after this had been going for 10 mins or so, the younger, rather more earnest one interrupted. “So, have you heard the teachings of Our Lord?”

Older JW seemed a bit frustrated by this, and gave his mate a sort of, ‘just relax, dude, she’s a chick and she’s talking to us, and we’ll get back to the god stuff in a minute”, kind of nudge. I politely said that I wasn’t really interested and was actually “a bit of an atheist”. Older JW found this hilarious:

“Bit of an atheist, he he, thought that was pretty much all or nothing so what do you do in your spare time here do you like living here it’s a bit quiet but I don’t mind it …”

Slightly nonplussed by the return of the conversation to all matters secular, Young and Earnest waited as long as he could before again sticking up his pert little head to ask, “So, do you think any of your workmates would be interested in the teachings of Our Lord?”

At this, I saw a slightly sharper jab, more a “Dude, she’s a chick and she’s talking to us, we’ll get to the god stuff in a minute”, of the elbow variety. I duly noted the tragic ungodliness of everyone I knew, laughs all round, which was the signal for Older JW to amp up again:

“Have you been to the Netherlands the Netherlands is great I’ve stayed there for a couple of weeks already and I’m going to move there when I finish up here you really should go…”

Perhaps if nothing but concerned by his friend’s lack of proper sentence structure, Young and Earnest decided it was time - it wasn’t Jesus time; it hadn’t been that for the last 25 minutes or so- but time for drastic action nonetheless. One of the flock had strayed, and he was definitely up to the task of bringing its woolly ass back. Young JW shoved himself forward, puffed up his chest with his little name badge on it, took one last look at his still-rambling fallen angel, looked me square in my wanton eyes and chirruped, “Would you like to know about our website?”

Now, I’m not flattering myself here, and I am definitely not so far gone that I’ve taken to inventing the attentions of those sworn to chastity; that’s not really a level playing field, and kind of like getting a confidence boost from a frisky Labrador. But truly I have never seen anything like it. It wasn’t, ‘if looks could kill’; it wasn’t even ‘if looks could perhaps slice open your stomach with a rusty hacksaw and make dwarves dance on your entrails while force-feeding you egg salad’; this was something infinitely more nuclear, something along the lines of ‘if looks could turn an otherwise upstanding, godly young citizen into a slavering, raging, beast of the apocalypse whose last words would be a hormonal shriek of,

“DUDE SHE’S A FUCKING CHICK AND SHE’S FUCKING TALKING TO US!!!!”

before being transformed into the very mouth of hell and swallowing himself’, that might just about cut it.

Slightly concerned that shattered stone tablets were going to start raining from the sky, or at the very least that Older JW was going to need to buy some knee-guards for all the penance he’d be doing, I bid them good day and trudged home with my groceries, my hands all pink and sliced from holding them so long.

Here’s a lesson for you boys: really want to know What Jesus Would Do? He’d help a lady with her bags, that’s what.