One night, Elder Smalls and I were headed back to our apartment after an appointment had fallen through. We were walking through a quiet residential neighborhood, just a few feet from a main cross street. It was late enough that the streets were fairly empty, and we were mostly just focused on getting home. Then a car pulled up behind us and a feminine British accent called out to us, “Do you want a ride?” I replied back to the shining headlights, “Nah, we’re good.” The voice was curious as to who we were. We replied with the usual long spiel about the name of our church which always takes a bit of time. The voice said, “Hold on. I’ll pull over here. We’ll talk more.”
She was a young woman, around our age. She started, in her British accent, with general questions like asking if we went around talking to people about God and angels. That sort of thing.
I’d noticed she had a passenger, but I hadn’t really looked directly at them. I bent down to speak with them, and that’s when I saw it: the passenger was wearing a hockey mask. Another young woman, same age. Just sitting there, silent, ready to defend the goal.
We answered a few more questions about religion. Then the masked girl leaned over and whispered something to the driver. The driver recoiled from her and said, “I’m not asking that!” I’ve never shied away from tough questions, so I asked, “What’s the question?” The driver turned to us and said, “She wants to know if you have sex.”
I said, “Oh yeah, absolutely.” Everyone else seemed stunned. The driver replied, “You Do?” To which I said, “…When we’re married.”
After the moment of shock came the moment of obvious clarity. I smiled proudly for my solid smart ass answer.
The masked girl leaned in again. Another whisper. The driver relayed: “She wants to know if you’ll have sex with her.”
Again, partially flirting I said, “Oh yeah.” This time the pause was longer. Smalls looked like he’d just seen a ghost. The driver was taken aback. It should have been completely foreseeable when I followed up with, “…If I was married to her.”
The masked girl leaned in one more time. The driver said, “She wants to know if you will marry her.”
I said, “I haven’t even seen her face.” That’s an entirely different religion. I said, “Good night, ladies. It was nice to meet you.” And we kept walking.
We had already gotten their phone number and an address earlier, back when the questions were still about angels. We were planning to refer them to the missionaries in their area. We decided against that.
They stayed parked in the middle of the road. We got about fifty yards up the main cross street before they started driving again. As they passed us, they honked. We turned to look.
The masked girl had her full moon out the window. The car passed and turned right at the next residential street. A few seconds later we hear a honk behind us again and an even fuller moon cruised by us. I won’t describe everything we saw, but let’s just say she had her priorities about what parts of herself should be seen by others and which should remain hidden completely backwards. The same turn was made and a few seconds later a crazy head with hair flying everywhere around a hockey mask and flailing arms flew by us. They turned off the main road again and parked on the next smaller residential street and watched creepily as we crossed by walking up the main road.
I guess I never formally said “yes” or “no” to the proposal.
I do sometimes wonder what our children would’ve looked like.
And how good they would’ve been at hockey.
(Names have been changed)