Have you heard the one about the traveling salesman and the missionaries?

I don’t know whether it’s God, Allah, Jehovah, Gaia the Earth Mother, or just the universe in general, but I do know that somebody up there has a twisted sense of humor. Why else would innocent, well-meaning people with incompatible objectives be set upon colliding trajectories, if not for the sadistic amusement of a bored deity who just likes to watch?


Case in point: I was flying home from a work meeting in Chicago this week, exhausted and overtired, and as I waited to board my plane, I noticed a small group of young men and women, all of them about 18 or 19 years old, overdressed, and being shepherded around by a couple of older women. They were clearly part of some organized group, probably religious, and all of them looked excited and a bit overwhelmed for their impending travel.

Shortly after the group sat down to wait for their flight, another young man approached them. He seemed a little older and more experienced than they were, but not by much. I imagined him as a salesman of some kind, maybe 23 or 24 years old, new to his job, but clearly not anxious about flying. He caught my attention because of his amateurish, peacock-like strutting, obviously meant to gain the attention of two of the prettier girls within the group. But these girls were too excited about their impending trip to notice much else, even as he sat down right next to them.

These were beautiful young women, in an innocent, girl-next-door kind of way, and seemingly oblivious to his machinations. And the young man seemed far too inexperienced to realize he would have no chance with them. But as the dramedy began to unfold, I put down the Ian Fleming novel I’d been reading. This was much better.

It turned out that these girls were part of a Mormon Mission bound for Hong Kong. Their obvious anxiety about flying made me doubt they’d ever left Chicago before, but here they were, ready to start saving souls in the Far East. And what better feather for them than to have one in the bag before the plane had even taken off? And this boy was only too happy to listen to everything they had to say.

“Why sure, I’d love to see your copy of the Book of Mormon. Oh, you don’t have a spare? Well, let me give you my address so you can send me one. Here’s my phone number, too. Will you be stopping over in the San Francisco area? How long is your layover? Maybe you’d like me to show you around?”

These girls wanted nothing more than to save a gentile’s soul, and he wanted nothing more than to sleep with one, or possibly two pretty girls. But neither side was going to get their wish, not through any fault of their own. It’s just that life is like that sometimes.

My plane boarded before theirs, so I never heard the end of the affair, or which side tired first. The optimist in me would like to imagine they all got their happy endings. But life is compromise. Perhaps those girls are in Hong Kong now, doing good works for their church. And that boy has learned that the missionary position rarely involves real missionaries.