I was sitting at the bus station minding my own business.
A man of about 50-55 comes towards me and asks if it's all right if he smokes. I thought it was very (see, overly, for the society we live in) polite of him to ask and said "sure".
This was quite obviously a ploy.
He begins to tell me a story.
"I just couldn't sit at the other bus station. There was a girl there; dressed far too revealingly for me, her chest hanging out and short pants".
I'm staring at him as though he's grown an extra head. Instead his beard,
peyot, kipah (yarmulke/skull cap) and
tzitzit become glaringly obvious props for his forthcoming tale and story.
In my head, I'm screaming: "Why? Why is this man talking to me and regaling to me this bullshit story!?"
He continues (sans my loud thoughts that this man is a religious nut): "I ask [the aforementioned girl] do you believe in G-d?"
In my mind: "Mercy!"
He tells her words: "'Yes' she says and I ask you [that is, me and the universe in general most likely] if she's have said 'yes, but I sin', I could live with that... But dressed the way she is... how can she say that!?".
Meanwhile, I'm trying to understand why this woman (if she indeed exists outside this man's narrative) engaged with this man, seeing as I was doing my best to Not Engage with this person and his irrational tirade about how this woman's dress somehow marks her heretic - obviously I'm the best audience ever! What with my long jeans, trainers, long-sleeved shirt and high necked top underneath it.
If only we were telepathic, nay?
He goes: "She tells me her beliefs are simple. How can creation be simple?!"
How I wished I had a desk on which to bash my head and his continuously!
Throughout this entire time I'm
dying for a bus,
any bus to arrive to take one of us away! I'm also silent, grimacing from time to time and keeping away from him as much as possible while not leaving the bus stop - I really did not feel safe enough to tell to STFU... perhaps if there was another person there I would have told him to stop bothering me... but *Gah*, the situation just really did not encourage aggressive-aggression and I went for body-language instead.
"Creation can't be simple" this man says, "I tell her [still this very-well-could-be-fictional-girl] 'that table? You see it? Someone designed it, yes?' she replied 'yes'. So no tell me G-d doesn't exist!"
I was ready to throw up on him. I had been feeling queasy regardless, but I could have blown chunks over this.
He continued with this line of talk and thought for a good ten minutes, in addition going on to inform me that the Bible predicted Swine 'flu (o_O) and that according to Rabbi What-ever-the-fuck 14,5-and something are going to die because that's the
Gimatric interpretation of the Hebrew letters of Swine 'flu (which are שפעת חזירים).
I actaully breathed a sigh of relief when his bus arrived and he was out of my life.
It was just too odd. I don't think I'd ever been proselytised to before. Obviously him asking me if he could smoke was a ploy to start engaging me in conversation.
Good tactic.
I now have a funny anecdote about Jewish fundamentalists... who are so different from all the other ones you encounter in the street (much to our annoyance)
Off Topic, but related to the fact that I'm home and talking about this.I'm feeling queasy and at the last minute decided not to go the talk tonight, because I'd rather not be sick in front of people.
I'm disappointed, but hopefully I'll be able to catch the DAM people at a later date during their visit in the region.
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