Proselytizing for Jehovah’s Witnesses during last Sunday’s Vikings game wasn’t the smoothest call Prince has ever made.
An Eden Prairie woman, who prefers to be identified only as Rochelle, said, “Door bell rings. My husband runs upstairs and says, ‘Prince is at the door!’ I said, ‘No way.’ ”
Even though this was an inopportune time, they let in the man who introduced himself at “Prince Nelson” and another man.
“I’m terrible with names,” Rochelle said. “He was a bass player for some group, a long time ago. Older gentleman.” Larry Graham? “Very good,” Rochelle said.
“This is Sunday about 2 o’clock. And it’s the night of Yom Kippur. My first thought is ‘Cool, cool, cool. He wants to use my house for a set. I’m glad! Demolish the whole thing! Start over!’ Then they start in on this Jehovah’s Witnesses stuff.
I said, ‘You know what? You’ve walked into a Jewish household, and this is not something I’m interested in.’
He says, Can I just finish? Then the other guy, Larry Graham, gets out his little Bible and starts reading scriptures about being Jewish and the land of Israel.” Uh-oh. Rochelle said she could not help but think, the Vikings had possession of the ball about two seconds ago.
“They stayed for about 25 minutes,” Rochelle said. “Left us a pamphlet.”
She should have asked Symbolina for an autograph.
“There’s no reason to slam him,” she said. “He didn’t do anything wrong; he was very kind. We watched him leave. Outside is a big black truck with a woman, long dark hair, in the front seat and they left.”
The woman met the general description of Prince’s supposed wife, Manuella. Rochelle seemed perplexed that Prince didn’t seem to stop at any other houses in her neighborhood.
“They go door-to-door. Walking. He wasn’t walking. He was driving.” Hey, he was knocking on doors during a Vikings-Falcons game — you can’t expect Symbolina to follow ALL the rules of the religion he declared as his new faith in a 2001 magazine interview.
“It was so bizarre, you would have just laughed,” she said.
The perfect esprit d’escalier came to Rochelle after Prince left: “If I showed up at Paisley [Park], would you let me in your front door to talk about Judaism?”
There was no response from Paisley Park, where a note seeking a comment was delivered Thursday.