The Cleaning Lady

For about ten years, we had a cleaning lady who also cleaned house for Debby Reynolds. It came to be that Ms. Reynolds wanted Berta to be full time at her place, and even gave her a guest house at the ranch after Berta's husband died. So my wife hired a new couple, wife and husband, to clean the house.

The new folks do a fine job, and are really nice people. I enjoyed having them around and often got into long conversations with the husband. He watches a lot of science programs on television and is retired from the telephone company, so we had enough in common to enjoy one another's company.

At the end of last year, we gave them Christmas gifts, which is a common practice. Jackie - the wife - thanked me but told me that they don't celebrate Christmas. I told her that's not a problem, just consider them New Year's gifts.

Well, several weeks ago, it came up in conversation that they are Jehovah's Witnesses. They think the earth is 6,000 years old, for christ's sake! There are some things about Jehovah's Witnesses that I find troubling, besides the obvious belief in the big guy in the sky. Even though they are the same people I had come to like, I find that I don't really look forward to having them around as much as before, and I don't have the same liking for the conversations we used to have. Does that make me a bigot? Or is it reasonable to judge people by their beliefs as well as by casual interactions?

My wife's sister (and her husband and daughter) are JW. They believe all the same claptrap and claim not to celebrate birthdays or Christmas. If gifts show up in the mail around those same dates "it's just coincidence."

They're nice people but their ridiculous religious beliefs make me respect them very little.

When the daughter was involved in a domestic infidelity incident leading to a divorce last year I realized JW's are no better than the rest of us. I try to be tolerant of other people's failures but religion is a tough one.

My wife is an ex-JW, and was deeply into it throughout her childhood. I mean, her grandmother took her round door-to-door "pioneering" (recruiting), and she believed all the crap, naturally enough. But when she was a teenager, her intelligence kicked in and she quit. She and her sister left Florida and moved to New York. Big sister didn't quit religion altogether: she is now into Agape, which seems to be a sort of cross between Christianity and New Age. That sounds odd, but appears to work out to be slightly more sensible than either one separately. The wife basically said ballocks to the lot of them, but she says she does miss the fellowship part of being JW. If you're in a JW congregation, you effectively have a large group of friends and neighbors that will help with whatever troubles life brings. Right now, we have almost no-one that we could call for support when trouble strikes, not being a very social couple.

So, where does that leave me? Well, I don't like mixing with unintelligent and/or uneducated people, so hanging with people who think the Earth was created by the hand of god 6,000 years ago (and is likely to come to an end any day now) doesn't appeal. But on the plus side, the chances are excellent that they are honest and hard-working, so if you can avoid any proselytizing, they should be OK to be around. You probably wont be able to talk about religion or politics or science, but maybe you can discuss baseball or something.

_Howard wrote:

Even though they are the same people I had come to like, I find that I don't really look forward to having them around as much as before, and I don't have the same liking for the conversations we used to have. Does that make me a bigot?

It's like when someone has B.O., or you find out they're cheating on their spouse, or they beat their dog or kids. These are character flaws, and when you consider the whole person if there are certain aspects of their character that you find repugnant it makes it hard to continue to be their friend.

Religion has a "special status," when somebody believes something really bone-stupid you're expected to just smile and nod. I don't know why.

It's easy to cast these types off as complete idiots. I have always found the more devout to be the more greedy and untrustworthy among us. I once worked for a man who held a high position in his church - can't remember which one, but one of the larger ones - and I would never leave my wallet lying around where he might find it.

But then one of them does something unexpected. The cleaners and I were chatting one day and they mentioned that they were watching the entire series of M*A*S*H. I told them that I had seen every episode of the program except the last. A large storm had cut the power for most of the state on the night it was broadcast.

So a couple of weeks later, when they came to do the cleaning, they brought me a nice new two-disk set of the last episode, and a M*A*S*H T-shirt. It's sometimes difficult to interweave their weirdness and their niceness.