May062009

Watchmaker

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It’s the year 2004, a time of innocence. A gentle Spring day and I’m hanging around a university campus following around the girl I had no chance with but trying to play it all cool and casual. We’re a world and an eon away from the Kansas school board, the link between dwindling pirate populations vs. global warming and the subsequent discovery of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

She sits me down at a table with her friends and conversation flows back and forth amongst the group.

“Hey Jack, you’re a pretty smart guy, right? Nick! Tell Jack that watch thing.”

That watch thing?

Nick was a well-meaning guy. Friendly, approachable and with non-threatening looks; he unclasps his wristwatch and lets it drape over his fingers. He faces it towards me, leans in and begins his practiced storytelling.

“Look at my watch. Clean piece of engineering, right? All these little cogs and gears that fit together so perfectly and with so much purpose. Definitely made by a really talented guy, wouldn’t you agree?”

I thought he was trying to sell me his watch. Either that or this was leading towards some kind of sinister prank that they play on the new guy in the group. Personally, I thought his timepiece was rather cheap and generic.

Then, it gets weird. The more well-traveled readers already know where this is going. He starts launching into a Creationist spiel. Starts telling me about how all these things on Earth are assembled in just away that they work perfectly and how it must be the work of God. You know the story.

After a few minutes of this, Nick falls silent and the group waits for a reaction from me. The others are not Christian fundamentalists, they’re not here to convert me. Those bastards were waiting for a confrontation. Perhaps this was like a mini-intervention from Nick so they could get him to stop him from trying to convert them all the time.

“So what do you think?” she asks.

I draw in a deep breath. “I’m not touching that with a 40-foot pole.” I laugh to myself and I leave the table.

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5 comments »

Karan

It’s a regular setup I think – I had the same pulled on me, but I happened to have Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion on me at the time. I pulled it out of my bag and sat it in front of the story teller, and asked him to come back when he had read it.

He never did come back…
Jack

You let him steal your book?
karan

yeah, but the set-upper got it back for me.
chicky

hahaha and the whole point of that was?
Karan

Not much, obviously :)

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