Cryptic Answers to Cryptic Questions

In Krasnoyarsk with my parents. We were going to the Catholic church on a Sunday. I had been bored for the entire hour, being stuck listening to people preaching to me in a foreign language.

Anyone in the church that I was supposed to meet or wanted to meet- I had met already. My mother had taken it upon herself to interview nuns and priests, deciding that she wanted to write and submit an article for Catholic Digest or some-such magazine. So, I was just sitting there in the nearby vicintity of my mother. I had already gone outside and back inside a few times, and I had walked around a bit trying to escape boredom. So, I was just sitting around, musing over various thoughts in my mind.

A guy came up to me. He looked kind of foreign. He asked me an odd question in Russian. I replied that I did not speak Russian. He then changed his question, and said "Oh- Where are you from?" To that I began to answer "Gran--", then stopped myself when I realized I wasn't obliged to say something he wouldn't understand (the name of a small town), and just said "Washington State in the U.S." If I were in the states, I would have said either "Central Washington State" or "Eastern Washington State," but I was in a place where that would mean nothing.

He then introduced himself as a reporter from the Czech Republic. "That's interesting." He told me that during mass he saw us, and he noticed we looked so... foreign.

"So... why are you here in Krasnoyarsk?" he asked.

I answered that we were just tourists.

He eyed my mom interviewing someone, so he asked "Is she a reporter?" Apparently the reason we were in Krasnoyarsk didn't quite register to him. I thought this over for a split second. "Well..." I began. "Not in the professional sense of the word."

This baffled the Czech-Republic reporter, who then asked, "Sooo... She's never done this before?"

I thought that over for a split second. "Well..." I began. She used to be a reporter for our small-town newspaper. "No, she's done this before." This baffled the reporter from the Czech-Republic a little more.

"Are you Morm- I mean missionaries?"

This struck me a bit. After I threw out the weird fact that he was about to ask if we were Mormon Missionaries (which obviously couldn't be...), I considered the situation. My mother was sharing a bunch of information about the faith. In the strictest sense, she was a missionary. I was starting to have a bit of fun confounding him. It was certainly more fun than just sitting around being bored. So, I replied, "Well... I guess you could say we are at the moment, but not in the professional sense of the word."

He stood there, trying to figure this out. "What does that mean?"

I then decided to say, "No... we are not missionaries."

He then diverted back to the first question. "O.K. Why are you here?"

To this, my answer was slightly familiar. "We are tourists."

"Why Krasnoyarsk? Tourists don't usually come to Krasnoyarsk. It's not a tourist city. Are you sure you're not missionaries?"

I wasn't sure how to answer this series of statements. I decided to answer, "We came here to see my brother's wedding."

He smiled, though he clearly didn't quite understand a whole heck of a lot. "Oh, so you're going to a wedding."

The wedding had been postponed, so we were no longer going to see the wedding. Thus, I had to reply, "No. We are not going to a wedding."

I realized I had stuck him in something reminiscent of an Abbott and Costello routine. At this point, before I could answer this question, my father butted in and answered the exact same questions I had just been asked, and pretty much supplied him with the same information I had just given.

It was obvious this guy seemed to be unable to get to the bottom of our story. And he calls himself a journalist?