Huh.

I went out to sushi with my buddy Otter–always dangerous, she showed me an EPIC shoe store nearby that had, among other things, Laurel Burch socks–and on the way back home, I stopped at a gas station to use the facilities.

I tried the door to the bathroom, found it locked (and thus occupied) and loitered nearby, waiting for the occupant to depart. After a moment, the door opened, and a rather large woman, probably in her mid-to-late twenties (she had good skin, so it’s hard to tell age exactly) walked out, gazed vaguely through me, mumbled "Jesus loves you," and left the store.

I paused there, going…wait, what?

It’s not that I particularly object to being told that Jesus loves me–the days when I got irked at people pushing their religion on me in such trivial fashion are mostly past.* If it makes them feel better, fine, Jesus can love me all he wants. (Regrettably I am never quick enough on my feet to come back with something like "And Ganesh thinks you’re swell!") No, it was the delivery. She said it in exactly the tone that one says "Excuse me," and more or less in the same context–you’re leaving a restroom, you’re walking past someone who, owing to size of corridors, isn’t quite in your personal space, and you murmur "Excuse me," and turn a bit sideways and this is such an incrediblynormal social interaction that one doesn’t even register it until somebody says something like "Jesus loves you" instead of "excuse me" or "pardon" and your brain goes…wait, what?

It wasn’t offensive or bad, it was just…puzzling.

*With occasional monthly flare-ups, during which even "Hello!" is a viciously underhanded assault.

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