In which people attempt to Ctrl-S my soul.

That's right.  I could not think of a cleverer (<--actual, correct word) title for my post than that.

Being in California, a place some might see as the complete polar opposite of Alabama, is a pretty interesting experience for a gal like me who until relatively recently in her life, had never spent more than a few days out of Alabama.  The truth is, they are vastly different places--most of the time.  But let's talk about a little thing called "religion" and more specifically "Christianity" that is apparently not as different as one might expect.

I will be blunt:  I have never been hijacked (I use that for lack of a better word) so frequently by Christian people of various denominations than I have been in the past two and a half weeks here, in California.  I'm not quite sure what to make of this, actually.  It's become... comical, because I'm starting to feel I have a magnet attracting these situations.  Brian and I attended that Market Night thing in which no less than three booths were dedicated to something or another--handling out pamphlets, offering a test that would tell you whether you were going to Heaven or Hell, kids singing and dancing to praise and worship songs.  At Market Night the week before, when his band was playing, a woman came up to me and told me I was beautiful... and then told me that every day I need to tell myself that, as well as remember some Bible verses.  And today, while we were walking down the busiest road in this small town, a car pulled over, waited for us to get up to where it was, and we were handed some Jehovah's Witness literature.

Now none of this stuff (except the "Heaven or Hell?" test) bothers me in the slightest, it's just... odd.  I'm used to seeing at least one church literally every few minutes on most any road I drive down in Alabama.  I drive past a giant "Go to church or the devil will get you!" sign in Interstate 65 when I leave Prattville.  But--and maybe it's just because of where I tend to hang out in Alabama, or rather where I tend not to--it's relatively rare to just be BAM! RELIGION'D! out there.  When it does happen, it's not so in your face, at least not at first.  It's like, "Oh, hi, I'm a really friendly stranger.  Isn't this lovely weather?  Would you enjoy this Bible?"

(There are, of course, exceptions--which really shouldn't count, as he's not actually a local person so much as a traveling crazy.)

Anyway.  I'm not trying to offend anybody with this stuff, it's just some interesting behavior I've observed.  And it's especially interesting to me as there's so much more diversity out here... I'm wondering why I'm not seeing more information about other religions?  I enjoy learning about all sorts of religions, so I'm secretly sort of hoping someone will pull over and hand me a pamphlet about Islam or the Baha'i faith or something.  I wonder how it would go over here in California if people at Market Night set up a booth for another religion--I know how uproarious (also a word) that would be in Alabama.