Lolin' the lulz, or something. (Crosspost from yesterday elsenet)

[bladespark]

Yesterday I had the most hilarious WTF conversation ever.

So, somebody knocks on the door. I happen to be holding a glass of wine at the time, I don't put it down, but go to answer. It's four moderately clean-cut guys, but no suits, so I don't immediately think "church." They ask if "Goober" (her real name) is here. I look *very* confused. They ask again, Goober (fullname)??? Does she live here? I finally say "Uh, why are you asking after my three year old?" The lead guy goes "Oh! So sorry, we're from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" and in that instant I realize *exactly* what has happened and why.

When she was born, the goober was "blessed", which means she was formally given a name with the laying on of hands and also, of course, formally entered onto the rolls of the church. This is all well and good, she can make her own choices later on about what to do about that, and meanwhile it soothes the madness of my mother.

But of course that *literally* can only happen with at least one parent who is a member.

Since then I had my name formally removed from the church's rolls, by a lawyer. (They will drag their feet and make it a right bitch to do, but there's an ex-Mormon lawyer guy who does it pro-bono in batches.)

So this has led to the frankly bizarre in the church circumstance where there is a listed "household" with just one name on it, in the church's records, and she's three. Of course when going through records, who looks at details if you don't need to? One name in a household means single, or Mormon spouse of an unbeliever. So they'd assumed, seeing one name, that the goober was an adult, and never even glanced at the rest.

They were all super uncomfortable, but the guy in charge went ahead and soldiered on, to give me their invite to the local ward's holiday shit. I won't go, as nothing is worth the hassle, though some of it's niceish.

The poor guy in charge looked absolutely mortified, though. He has no idea WTF is going on, since he doesn't know what I know.

I mean, I literally went "Oh!" and started grinning. Possibly because I'm a bit of a sadist.

I was nice to them, and thanked them for the invite and took their little event listing flyer. But meanwhile I was just cackling at them on the inside, and I'm sure grinning like a loon and holding a glass of wine, which makes me basically Satan.

People who pull their names off the rolls are SUPER rare, too, and the church never, ever, ever, ever talks about it. I didn't even know it could be done before seeing some things about it on reddit. So these poor schmucks have no clue WTF happened.

Lol!

Comments

[silveradept]

That most have been quite the shock for the young men to learn about the situation they had stumbled into.

[chalcedony_starlings]

^βPffffhh. XD

[thewayne]

A friend of mine was similarly sadistic. Lived in Scottsdale, a very tony part, before moving to Mexico during the Dubya years and becoming a citizen. His technique when evangilizers came around was to let them give their spiel at the door, and when they were done he'd do a thick New York Jew affectation and say "That sounds very nice! And we can have a nosh and after you're done we can talk about the Torah!"

That was usually enough to send them scurrying off.

[bladespark]

Hah! That's funny! Though when I did the door knocking thing as a wee, naive little squirt, I'd have gone "Oh! That sounds great!" and been super curious. I was a liiiiiiittle bit atypical of the sort.