Here it was Memorial Day morning, and I'm out in the front yard watering the gardens when I hear a car pulling up the driveway. It pulls into our section of the drive and I see it's a Witness couple I know in the front seat. The wife is driving and they spot me right off. The brakes are slammed on. I turn and give them a big smile and say, "Hi! How are you doing?" The husband says, "Fine" as the wife hits reverse and backs out. I just started laughing. Such silly behavior!
I'm glad they saw me like that. Our house sets back off the road and is pretty much out of sight of the highway, especially as the yard is surrounded by a 15 foot arborvitae hedge. When you drive through the hedge you're suddenly in this amazingly beautiful place with five gardens of perennialls just starting to blossom and grow, several terraced with stone walls, and with unique sculptures and large, unusual stones set on end among the plants. The gardens stretch up to an attractive, simple house, and beyond it is a wooded hillside. It's really quite dramatic, and time after time people who drive in and have never seen it tells us how amazing it is. None of the Witnesses in my old congregation has anything remotely as attractive.
So I'm supposed to be living this debauched life, and of course having left the Witnesses, it is assumed my life has just gone to shit. So for them to drive through that hedge and see Mr. Domesticity in my shorts and t-shirt watering this gorgeous garden must have been interesting to their sensibilities.
Oh, wait. I forgot. The Watchtower spin on that would be, "Sure, S4 is living in his own little paradise with his beautiful girlfriend. He's having his reward in full now. But he certainly won't be in the New System with us!"
The WTS spinmeisters! There's no way you can win a reasonable argument!
