An exercise in futility.

It was a beautiful fall day. On my way home from work, I noticed how warm and vibrant the falls leaves looked in the late afternoon, so as soon as I got home I grabbed my camera and went for a walk in my neighborhood.

I live right on the edge of what I consider to be a “buffer zone” between the extraordinarily rich side of North Omaha and the ghetto. It’s a relatively safe neighborhood, and fairly clean, but everybody has a chain-link fence and a lisp. It’s kind of like West Virginia.

So I was faintly surprised when I practically walked right into two young gentlemen in nice suits. (Apparently, one’s peripheral vision is compromised when one is looking through a camera’s viewfinder, and one is not always aware into whom one is walking.) I looked the two young men up and down: clean-cut, Caucasian, nice suits, moderately expensive briefcases, and they were both smiling. I was willing to bet $100 they were Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“Are you getting some good shots?” The short one gestured to my camera.

“Oh, yes. The light is really amazing right now.” I mentally scanned my flirting checklist, ran my fingers through my hair with an auxiliary hair-flip, and tried to hold my gigantic camera as if it weren’t some 50-pound alien baby.

“What kind of leaves…?” The tall one apparently was not aware that sentences end.

I laughed casually. “I have no idea. The colorful kind?” Lame.

“Well, it’s a beautiful day for it. Can you believe this weather?” Neither man was wearing a wedding ring, and I was pretty sure they were roughly my age. I hoped they weren’t gay.

“Not at all. I keep waiting for somebody to realize that we are the only state in the country that’s not getting pummeled with rain and send us a tornado just on principal.”

The young men laughed appropriately at my charming weather humor as I gave them my best through-the-lashes Girly Eyes. I wasn’t entirely sure why they were meandering through my neighborhood dressed like attorneys, but I had a pretty good idea. Still, a single man is a single man.

The short one looked at me. “Have you ever been to Utah?”

Two thoughts ran through my head: That was quite a segue. Also: I knew it. Missionaries. Dammit.

“I…uh, no. Why?”

The tall one looked comically at the short one as if he, too, were wondering how Shorty planned to continue that thought.

“It’s quite nice there in the fall, too.” Uh huh.

I started to make some reference to a recent drive through Pennsylvania and the beautiful fall foliage, but it was absent-minded small talk as I noticed the name tags they were both wearing. Shorty was actually Jacob, and the tall one turned out to be Matthew. I wondered if Jehovah’s Witnesses were allowed to choose biblical names the way resort workers in Cancun were allowed to choose easy-to-pronounce English names like Jefferson and Mike.

I abandoned my 101 Ways to Look Cute and started trying to think of a way to end the conversation that didn’t involve the phrase, “I’ll take my chances with Armageddon, thanks.”

Before I knew it, Jacob had managed to introduce himself as a Messenger of God, and he asked me if I wanted to go somewhere to discuss the Truth. I fought the impulse to laugh at how that conversation might go, and instead said, “I actually think I better be getting home, but thank you.”

“Do you think if we gave you some reading material to look over, you might consider calling us later to talk about the word of God?”

About 7 inappropriate jokes went through my head. I carefully considered how to respond. Finally I settled on, “Honestly?”

The tall one, Matthew, smiled. I liked him. “Well, we wouldn’t want you to lie to us.”

“Then, no. I probably wouldn’t. But good luck with the rest of your…you know, mission.”

I smiled, hoisted my 700-pound camera over my shoulder, turned in the direction of my apartment building, and left the cute missionaries behind amidst the leaves. I felt good that I had been both honest and polite to them. They probably catch a lot of shit from closed-minded and irritable people on their route. People around here get prickly about God, especially when the idea is being hawked like Thin Mints. I didn’t want to be disrespectful of their beliefs, but I didn’t want to waste their time by humoring them either.

It’s true what they say, though: all the cute guys are either gay, married, or Jehovah’s Witnesses.