The Word Man

As evidenced by the abundance of RVs, campers, speed boats, and Sea-dos, my new neighborhood is decidedly more working class than the deer infested hills of Belmont. One of the RVs down the street stands out because it is the home away from home of The Wordman. I know this because underneath the window framing his blogolicious laptop rig resides a sign in 45 point font saying "www.thewordman.ca".

Walking Karma in the rain this morning, I was tempted to knock on The Wordman's RV door and introduce myself.

"Hello Wordman. I'm Marctopia. How's your webtraffic this fine morning. Wanna get some coffee?"

He's Canadian. I love Canada. In the very least, it would make for an interesting blog entry. Instead, I decided to read up on The Wordman prior to engagement. Boy, was that a good idea. It turns out that he is sort of a churchy ex-missionary dude.

While I quiet like religious folk, my previous experience with missionary people has not been good. Often they try to steer the conversation to the importance of Christ in their lives. It makes sense. If you really do believe in the path towards salvation, you would want to help everyone to realize this path. However it does get tiring

"You like this coffee. I like this coffee. It sure tastes good... but the caffeine high is nothing compared to the love of Jesus."

Because I'm a jerk-hole, I usually take an argumentative contrarian position advocating the belief systems of natives prior to missionary contact. This is where a little bit of the Jesuit edumacation and American history gets me into serious trouble.

So I think I'll avoid the whole issue by maintaining a positive neighborly relationship to The Wordman. I'll nod and smile as I walk my dog and remain the agnostic who got away.