Today certainly threatened to turn into an interesting day ~ well, more interesting than it was anyway.

We went to check out the mile long yard sale at Watertown. It turned out, with all the 'unofficial' yard sales added to be more like 12 miles long ~ and we hit nearly all of them. One stood out from them all though.

For the first time ~ EVER ~ someone directly confronted me about my beliefs. Or should I say, what he thought were my beliefs. Since this person absolutely has no clue as to who I am, he had only his Bob Larsonesque diatribe to fall back on.

What happened was this:

I hesitated to approach this guy's set up in the first place ~ I don't know what clued me. I told my mom, "I would really like to go over and look at that guys military stuff but I know I'm going to get an attitude, especially since I'm female." Little did I know...

I went over to the booth after I saw Bobby walk over. I felt relatively 'safe' in doing that with backup. The guy had some neat stuff - books on how to read the land, compared to a topo map; how to survive in the wild, ranger style, etc. He also had some neat mexican blankets and such down on another table. As I started looking at the books, he noticed my pentagram with the miraculous medal behind it. Here is the dialog, as best as I can remember it:

Man: What's that on your necklace?

Me: A pentagram.

Man: I see that ~ with the St. Christopher medal behind it.

Me: It's not St. Christopher, it's the Virgin Mary. It has been blessed and was a free gift, so I wear it.

Man: That pentagram is an evil thing!

Me: Man, it's not evil!

Man: Sure it is! Witchcraft is evil! (Here I start bracing for the very tired "Bible says 'suffer not a witch to live' crap)

Me: Nooooo, it's not.

Man: Sure it is! What is it then if it's not evil?

Me: It is a sign of my Wiccan faith. (Why throw the guy a bone by saying Pagan?)

Man: It's the Same thing! Wicca is witchcraft! There is no white magic! It's all black! You're either following God or you're not! You can not follow God and do witchcraft too!

Me: Well, that is your opinion and I don't have to agree with it. I respect you for having one, though.

Man: Have you ever read the story of the Witch of Endor?

Me: Yes, I have.

Man: There you go! (Meanwhile, I'm thinking, "huh?")

Me: That is your opinion and I don't have to agree with it.

Man: No you don't but it's not my opinion ~ it's the truth!

Me: Like I said, that is your opinion and I don't have to agree with it. I respect you for having one, though.

At this point, I was putting down whatever it was I was considering buying at the time ~ this was getting to be tiring.

Man: It says in the Bible...

Me: (Chuckling) Like I said, it is your opinion and I don't have to agree with it. I respect you for having one, though.

At this point I simply turned around, waved and headed back to the car, chuckling the whole way. Bobby stayed behind to buy a compass from the guy ~ he said that once I turned around, the guy just stood there as if he didn't know what to say or do. I suppose no one had ever stood up to him that way before ~ or at least chuckled as they did it. Only other thing Bobby had to say once he stopped laughing was, "You really got him told, didn't you?"

Yep ~ I do believe I did and it felt good to know that I could.