who'll crack first?

I was chatting with my form class today. They’re an amiable bunch of 17 year olds, and I get on well with them. We don't tend to get into too many deep and meaningful conversations - usually.

We discussed the formal for a while today. It had taken place the night before and I was surprised to see so many of the class actually make it to school. I hadn't been invited, something I make a point of bringing up at every possible chance.

One kid hadn't gone to the formal. I remember when I was his age I didn't go to my formal either - I went with a friend to a Bob Dylan concert. I was keen to know if he had come up with a worthy alternative to spending the night wearing rented evening wear eating a luke warm meal and bouncing about a crowded dance floor trying to seduce something in a dress before the lights came up.

"I went to a meeting."
"a meeting?"
"a religious meeting. I'm a Jehovah's Witness."

I already knew he was. I had a form pointing out that he would refuse blood in a medical emergency locked in my filing cabinet and we'd already had a discussion on how his pacifism and my pacifism were actually as far removed as pacifism and war mongering. I came out of that one wondering how I had gone from being a wooly liberal pacifist into a war loving fascist in three easy steps. He has a way of turning everything I say into something wholly contradictory. I admire that.

Usually my discussions with my lower sixth pupils end after 5 sentences, so I prepared to move on to the next topic – but he hadn’t finished,

“Are you religious sir?”
“As a matter of fact I am.”
“I respect that.”

It struck me that he hadn’t asked the nature of my religiousosity. Normally that would be an important part of that question. But to him it didn’t matter if I was a Presbyterian, a Cistercian Monk, a Muslim or a Discordian. All that mattered was that I was religious (and he respected that) and that I was wrong (which he obvious didn’t respect.)

“It won’t stop me trying to convert you though.” He said with a slight edge and a knowing smile.
“I’d be disappointed if it did.” I replied with, hopefully, a similar edge and an even knowinger smile.

And so the challenge is set – the gauntlet thrown. I don’t have long in this school so we’re under pressure. He to turn me into a Restorationist, Millenialist, Adventist door knocker – and I to turn him into Calvinistic Reformationalist. Anyone else sense an impending stalemate?