Fate toys with me some more. . .
The Jehovah's Witness lady has been at my door twice in the past week. She must think I'm easy pickings--a bored little lady, at home all day, with only dog and small child for company. When she stopped by yesterday, we were, legitimately, on the way out the door, but she said she'd be back.
Life is full of trials. I could just open the door, and sweetly say, "No thank you", as Kipp liked to say, when he first learned the power of the phrase, and I would tell him to pick up his toys or finish his orange juice. I could. But people like this always catch me unawares and the only thing I have to fall back on is politeness.
So, to prepare for the next assault of the Jehovah Lady, I went to my bookshelf and pulled off a book by another of my favorite writers, An Accidental Biography by the late Barbara Grizutti Harrison. She is probably best known for her book Italian Days, but she came to mind after my front-door encounter, since I knew she had been forced into witnessing for Jehovah in her youth, an activity which later steeled her for rejection in her career as writer and journalist. (Though I think she was the one who rejected Mick Jagger's advances when she interviewed him for Rolling Stone, and not the other way around). She wrote an entire book denouncing the religion entitled: Visions of Glory: A History and a Memory of the Jehovah's Witnesses.
I do not possess that book, but I figured her autobiography would still give me some answers. I opened the book, scanning for ammunition, but was stopped short by a long chapter entitled "Home Economics", realizing I had stumbled onto a treasure trove of insights into topics recently covered here and elsewhere. I have yet to delve through the riches, but am going to sink myself into that chapter over the next few days, while at the same time making preparations for Kipp's fifth birthday party on Saturday.
And when the Jehovah Lady comes back to my door, I'm just going to be too otherwise engaged to answer.
9:31:30 AM 
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