Served with a smile

We've had an appointment for a couple weeks for the local phone co-op to install our fiber optic line from the road into the house. I was just about to make a call to find out if they were running late or we had been forgotten when I saw them pull in the drive. I opened the door while the technician was still about twenty feet from the back door.

"Saw ya comin'."

"Well, sir, I am about to provide you with a state-of-the-art service that will make this cloudy, rainy day seem like one on which the sun is brightly shining on you and yours!"

Finding it a little strange that there should be a sales pitch forthcoming for a product and service we have already purchased, I replied, "You sound like a Jehovah's Witness."

In this neck of the woods, one should know better than to make such a statement. Yet, after some embarrassment and a couple apologies, we had a lovely conversation based on mutual, certainly more general ethics, beliefs and opinions. We even discussed whether the internet in its pervasiveness was inhumane and to what extent it effected familial relationships. He related how his house rules conflict with his children's friend's visits to his home. I could feel a mini-sermon coming on and interrupted.

"Again, I am sorry for any offense."

"Don't worry, I get it all the time."

I am not unfamiliar with their doctrine: "I have a couple friends who were raised as Jehovah's Witnesses, but in that they are both gay, they have been shunned."

Oddly likening their predisposition to drunk driving, he asserted, "Well, there's always free will." And knowing that I would not be able to dissuade him from such a perspective, chose to end our chat with a story.

"I'm an artist, so I see things a bit off kilter sometimes. When we started farming, one of the things that bothered me was the perniciousness of some of the weeds, and when you farm organically, it's tough to get rid of them on a wholesale basis. I asked myself what I could use to kill weeds besides a hoe.

"Now, I know from large-scale farming that a type of ammonia is used on crops as a fertilizer, but use too much, and you'll kill the plant. Urine has ammonia in it, and I had a ready supply of piss, so I decided to see if I could kill a weed just by peeing on it on a daily basis. And, because I'm an artist, I thought to videotape the process.

"I chose a thistle just starting to come up by the barn door there. Every day I'd pee on it, camera in one hand and up to my eye while I aimed with the other hand. Well, sir, one day while I had my eye stuck to the viewfinder, a van full of female JWs pulled up in the drive, but I didn't see them until I was done with my business and they were backing up."

We had a good chuckle but we did get down to business immediately thereafter. And it is only now, several hours later, I wonder if his "wife of eighteen years" had been in the van.