Today in downtown Kitchener, there was a guy at speakers' corner (yes, we have one, at King and Benton.) Anyway, he was preaching. And not inspiring, Jesus-loves-you preaching, this was fire-and-brimstone stuff. That happens from time to time, but usually it's one guy speaking on his own. Today it was a big production. He had his own soundsystem, and people on each corner of the intersection handing out literature.
It's pretty common for charities to have people canvassing downtown at street corners. I'm sure I'm not alone in that I don't want to be rude, but I also don't want to get caught receiving a long, awkward pitch. Normally I'm good at using other pedestrians to avoid the canvasser in a basketball-style pick-and-roll manoeuvre.
But here I was a little worried, because I had to go to the diagonally opposite corner, which meant that I'd have to go past three of the folks handing out stuff. The first one handed me a pamphlet, and I accepted it politely but kept going. At the second corner, a woman tried to hand me a gospel-themed business card. I turned that down, showing that I already had the pamphlet. But I thought that was unusual, that they seem to have something different being distributed at each corner. So I look across the street to see what I'm about to be offered at the next corner, and I see a guy with a big wooden cross over his shoulder. I thought, great, how am I going to politely refuse that?
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