Flirting With (A Mormon) Disaster

I don’t think it’s fair that my desire to find a date might send me to Hell, Modern Philosophers.

However, I know that once I publish this post, The Nuns will storm The House on the Hill in anger, Pope Francis will probably Skype me with a stern lecture, and my Sunday house guest will excitedly set up an office for me down in the eternal Hellfire.

I couldn’t help it, though.  Honest.

In my defense, she was really pretty, extremely sweet, and had a great opening line…

Let me try to explain myself in hopes of keeping the Catholic Guilt from driving me batty, and the angry Nuns from driving me out of Heaven.

Last night around 5:00, I went for a walk.  I was a few blocks from The House on the Hill when I noticed two attractive young women headed in my direction.

I’d never seen these two before, but I’d seen their type in the neighborhood.  They had that look of “Can I talk to you about Jesus?” written all over their faces.

I’d just finished last night’s blog post about being kinder, so I wasn’t going to unleash any of my pent up anti-religion fury if they tried to talk to me, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to strike up a conversation.

As expected, they set their sights on me, and started with simple hellos and then asked, “Do you know what today is?”.

I assumed the answer was going to be something like “The day I open my heart to Jesus” or “The day Jesus saves my soul”.

Trying to be good, and swallowing my usual wise ass answer, I replied, “Wednesday”.

The talkative one, the one who would cause me to spiral down the abyss into Hell, smiled and told me that it was also National Trail Mix Day.  Then she caught me off guard by pulling a bag of trail mix from her satchel and offering me some.

Even I know not to take candy from Mormons…I mean…strangers, but I had to admit that her little opening line had me intrigued.

And then there was the other issue…

She was quite easy on the eyes and had an enchanting smile.

I was smitten.

Despite having absolutely no desire to talk about religion, I decided that this beautiful brown eyed girl could talk to me about anything she wanted.

She introduced herself as Sister M (actual name withheld because it just seems like the Christian thing to do) and explained that she was a Mormon Missionary.

Of course, as soon as she said she was a Mormon, I thought about that HBO show “Big Love”.  I remembered that Bill Paxton had three wives on that one, and I thought that if I got to marry Sister M as part of the deal, then maybe becoming a Mormon wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen to me.

I know that’s wrong.

I shouldn’t rush ahead to marriage.  My thoughts should’ve been on dating.  I blame cable TV for poisoning my otherwise pure thoughts.

Forgive me, Father, for I have mentally married myself off to a Mormon.

Truth be told, I had no problem chatting up a very pretty woman on a nice summer night.  We didn’t really talk about religion.  She told me about Utah.  I talked about New York.  She confessed it has always been her dream to move to New York.

Eventually, she got around to her pitch on Jesus and the Mormon Church, but I was pretty clear that I wasn’t big on religion.  I told her I’d be happy to talk more, but only if I got to talk to her.  I made no attempt to hide that my interest was in the Missionary rather than in her mission to convert me.

She asked me if I’d like a Book of Mormon, but that just made me think of the award winning play with Josh Gad.

I politely declined, and Sister M asked me to consider going to mass some Sunday.  She promised to be there if I attended.

So we parted ways.  Sister M and her Silent Bob of a sidekick headed towards Bangor.  Me off to finish my walk and dwell on the crush I’d developed on the adorable Mormon.

I figured the story would end there, and made a mental note to blog about it today.

Today, after my harrowing trip to the doctor, I decided to reward myself with Chinese food for lunch.  I haven’t had Chinese in forever, and today seemed the perfect day to indulge.

On the walk home, General Tso’s Chicken in tow, I ran into my favorite Mormon.

We were on a completely different street, she immediately smiled in recognition, and greeted me by name.

Sister M looked even prettier in the afternoon sun, and commented on how it must have been fate that brought us together again.

We all know how I feel about fate and signs, Modern Philosophers.

Today, I was wearing my Nite Show pullover, so that got us to talking about the show.

Sister M commented that the show was on much too late for her to watch, but she wrote down the name so she could look it up on YouTube.

Being a wise ass, I made a comment about how Catholics have later curfews.  That made her giggle.

She told me that they were soon getting social media accounts, so maybe she would try to find me online and let me know what she thought of the show.

Again, it was mostly a chat about life other than religion.  If this had been any other circumstance, I probably would have taken this second chance meeting as a sign that I should ask her out.

But she was a Mormon missionary.  Even though I liked her attention, she was easy to talk to, and she was so darn pretty, I knew that she was probably just being all sweet and charming to get me to join her church.  It wasn’t actual interest from an attractive female.

Isn’t that always the way?

Religion is so complicated!

Again, she tried to give me a Book of Mormon, but I declined.  I told her if I ever ran into her a third time, which I knew was highly unlikely as she was assigned to Bangor and Orono and was only in my town for a few more hours, I would take the book.

She promised to watch The Nite Show, wished me well, and headed in the other direction with her silent partner.

General Tso and I returned to The House on the Hill for a feast.

Guess who I ran into on a completely different street while walking off my Chinese food a couple of hours later?

That’s right.  The Nuns are now armed and on their way to The House on the Hill to make sure the Mormons do not get any closer to the lonely Catholic Guy.

Sister M and Silent Sister were on the other side of the street and there was heavy traffic, but she smiled and waved her Book of Mormon at me as she held up three fingers.

A deal is a deal.  She finally made is across the street and gave me my prize.

I made it clear to Sister M that I wasn’t going to read it, that I wasn’t going to go to church, and that I was only interested in talking to her.

She just kept flashing that pretty smile and saying she’d see me at church.

Before leaving, she did ask me where we filmed The Nite Show.  I told her and said she was welcome to join me there any time.

So was it wrong of me to flirt with the pretty Mormon?  I did make it clear that I wasn’t interested in joining her church.

There’s nothing wrong with chatting up a beautiful woman that the fates put in my path three times in less than twenty-four hours, right?

I’ll have to ask my guest for some clarification on Sunday.  If anyone’s going to know, it will be him…