Free The Unwelcome Guest Plus Nin and Nan by Eckhard Gerdes Page B

Christ as my personal savior."
"Did you tell him about your beliefs?"
"No! He wasn't interested in my beliefs! All he wanted was to force his own XYZ Brand of Christianity on me. You know what I said?"
"No."
"I said, 'Excuse me. Would you accompany me to the customer service desk so that I can have you thrown out of the store for harassing a customer?' Then he said, 'I'm not harassing you,' so I replied, 'Then shut up!' He had no chance in hell of converting me to XYZ Brand that way. If he'd been smart, he'd have asked me about the cereal boxes. He'd have talked to me for five hours about cereal boxes if I wanted before ever saying anything about XYZ Brand."
"That's like what I read about W. Clement Stone, who wrote that Success through a Positive Mental Attitude book. He was an insurance salesman, and when he went on his rounds, he'd stop in at folks' houses and just talk to them about their families and such. You know—you have kids? You ever envision them going to college? Oh, really? Where? Mind if I ask you what you do for a living? And so on, never revealing once anything about himself. When his supervisors made follow-up phone calls to those folks later, you know—our man Stone was out there last week and we were wondering what your impression of him was—to a person these folks all said, 'Oh, Mr. Stone ? He was delightful! What an interesting person!' But as I said, he never said anything about himself. What these folks found interesting, apparently, was themselves! They loved talking about themselves. Stone knew this and used this to entice them into wanting to reciprocate, which they could, of course, by buying a little piece of mind from him."
"Hullooo?" came the voice again.
"Should we let him in?" asked Nan.
"Yes, but be careful. Be on your toes. Don't tell him anything. He may work for the revenuers. They're everywhere, I tell you, and are just waiting for a chance to destroy us."
"Okay. We'll be very careful. No cult evangelist is going to fool us."
"Let him in, Nan."
"Certainly, Nin."
The man at the door was weird and had silver stars in his long white beard. His shirt had white stars on a blue background, as did his duffel bag, and his loose pantaloons were pied red and white. His stovepipe hat swirled all four colors together. But he was barefoot.
Slung back over his shoulder was a folk guitar on a white silk strap. The strap had the initials "SRV" embroidered into it in silver thread.
"Couldn't stand the weather?" asked Nan, assuming the visitor to be a Stevie Ray Vaughn fan.
"Hulloo? Oh—the strap. My brother found it in an alley in Austin, Texas. It was a night when Jimmy Vaughn was playing with his brother's old band. Everyone said they could sense Stevie's presence that night, and then my brother, who tended bar there at Antone's, went outside for a smoke and spotted the strap. He brought it in and one of the guys in the band went pale and asked him where he'd gotten it. He said the alley. The band guy said that was spooky because it was Stevie's old strap."
Nan looked at Nin, "No Rogerian Strategy here, eh?"
Nin laughed. "Apparently not." He turned his attention to Uncle Sam. "What can we do for you?"
Nan's attention began to wander.
You know, at some point I stopped writing, and I started talking. Is this the epiphany I, as a Joycean, had set myself up for? Or am I delusional?
"..., so I'd be happy to play a song." Nan had missed the first half of the sentence, the cause in the causal connection. Without that, for all Nan knew, Nin and Nan could be facing a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument or a deceptive enthymeme or a nonsequitur. Unless the premise is true, the conclusion is invalid.
Nin was distracted by the strange look on Nan's face, and responded for them both: "Depends on the song."
Nin ushered Uncle Sam in, and Nan went to the fridge to get some Jesus' Own Brand cheap wine with a smiling half-crocked Jesus on the label, halo and all. In the famous TV commercial, Jesus would sing, "You