You should have invited them, offered them some non-alcoholic, non-caffeinated drinks and chatted about Jesus.
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Do We Know It’s Diwali?
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I should have. It could have been a fun use of my 16 yrs of catholic education.
But I had just moved to the country for work and was meeting up with my new co-workers. So bringing along my own missionaries would have pegged me as an ugly American.
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i appreciate Mormons, in a way. they are dedicated.
was out working in my yard here in the Keys and i see two young, white-shirted gentlemen walking up:
First Gent: “you need a hand?”
Me (pointing to prosthetic lower leg): “no, but i could use a foot.”
set the pace right away. yes, i know who you are, elder. i lived for 20 years not a mile from your very large temple in Mesa, AZ (a very Mormon enclave). no need to tell me of the exploits of jeebus in the new world.
i am not christian.
thank you very much for your offer of assistance.
good day, gentlemen.
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How did they react???
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there was a pregnant moment before the double take, looking at each other, then at me and back as if trying to figure out if they had heard what they heard. then the spiel started, although cautiously. i’m not one to be impolite, but patience, that’s another thing.
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This is the exact thing i thought would happen:
“Haha nice joke have you heard the good news about Jesus of Missouri savior of the Americas” or whatever the hell they say.
“What joke?” Holding up saw “Now seriously give me your foot”
The dust cloud vanishes, leaving behind two sets of bicycle peel outs in your driveway.
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I thought noise-cancelling earphones and headphones were created for just this sort of scenario. I’d put a sleeping eye mask on, along with a set of ‘phones, select a playlist of heavy rock and let them get on with it.
Same goes for other annoying, noisy passengers.
Off topic, but there have been a bunch of mentions of noise cancelling headphones. I use a pretty fancy pair of Bose over ear ones, and I’ve found they block out the white noise and actually let me hear people talking better than if I weren’t wearing them. Did I get ripped off?
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They might be so fancy that you got the kind with multiple settings. Some headphones do have a setting for blocking extraneous noise so that conversations can be better heard (kind of like hearing aids), which also helps during phone calls, but when you want music or just to block out the world you have to switch to one of those settings.
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If that account is correct, then it’s definitely time to sue the airlines.
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I had a similar encounter- I was struggling to set up an extension ladder to fix a shingle on the gable end of my roof. I honestly really needed someone to hold the ladder for me. They came along at the right moment and offered to do it. I was genuinely grateful. They gave me their literature of course, which I accepted as a gesture for their help.
I thought that was the end of it. Hoo-boy was I wrong. They then proceeded to ring my doorbell every few days for weeks on end. I started out answering them and saying “no thank you”. Then I tried ignoring them. Nothing worked. Finally they came when a more forthright friend of mine was visiting and she went outside and told them in no uncertain terms to please stop bothering this lady. That finally worked.
I should have just climbed the ladder by myself. The cost wasn’t worth it. Help thy neighbour indeed.
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This is typical for noise cancelling headphones. They’re primarily good at blocking white noise and other consistent sounds. They work by listening to the world with microphones, then producing the inverse sound into the speakers in your ears to cancel out the waveform. However that only works to a point. There’s delay while the computer processes what it is hearing and tries to decide what the best opposite waveform is, and more complex multi-phase overlapping waveforms may have no clear “opposite”. Both those factors mean speech and other highly variable sounds are difficult to block.
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They pop by so randomly. I’ve thought before, if I knew when they were coming I’d be sure to always have some good, low-skill outdoor project going on so I could get their help. Things we used to do at work parties when I lived in a stronger community. Like remove the nails from all these old boards so I can re-use them, or re-mulch the garden beds. That could be kind of fun for a season, and maybe they’d decide to leave and quit coming by.
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Whenever I would visit friends in LA, I’d go with them to volunteer at Catholic Workers. I’m no fan of the Catholic church, but these guys are the real deal. No proselytizing, no guilt trips, just offering help because that’s what they’re called to do. I’d recommend volunteering there if you (general you, not just YOU) have a local group available and want to see what that experience of helping without expectations feels like (for you and for the people you’re helping).
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So, a win-win!
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Seconding that.
And people here probably already know about them, but Food Not Bombs is a great place to volunteer if you like cooking and feeding people. And there’s other stuff you can do with them, too, of course.
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That was my thought. That the cabin has to be full of people part of a group.
