[Don't] Ring My Bell (RE-POST FROM 7/19/13)

Tonight, my husband, Dan, and I spent some time crawling around the living room floor in an attempt to avoid some guy who rang our doorbell. It made me think of this blog post from 2013. 

It's summer, and that means I am more likely to be at home when people come to our door, for one reason or another. Some of you might be thinking, "I don't like solicitors either." But it's not just the solicitors that make my husband and I roll our eyes. It's everyone, even the Girl Scouts.

(NOTE: I am not a Girl Scout hater. I was a Girl Scout. I just don't like answering the door. I buy at least $36 worth of cookies every year from my Girl Scout students at school.)

Dan and I don't just get annoyed. We deny the doorbell even rang.

I have been known to stay in the office or hide silently behind the refrigerator door in the kitchen until the doorbell ringer leaves.

And if the bell rings while Dan and I are in the living room and visible from the the front door, we hit the floor and spend the next five or six minutes hidden behind our couch.

One time, it was a neighbor friend of ours who knocked on the door, without the least intention of selling us anything. Finally, he called my cell phone. I blamed it on the fact that I was listening to my iPod. (I was actually listening to my iPod.)

"You are entitled to not answer your door, I guess," the neighbor said.

The other afternoon, the doorbell rang, and I fell to floor like I was on a black ops mission. I turned off the TV from my prone position. It turned out it was just a package, and the delivery person had left as soon as the bell sounded.

That same day, a guy with a clipboard had knocked on the door earlier, and I was writing in the office. Perhaps, that is why UPS made me a little jumpy.

The clipboard man came back that evening while Dan was washing dishes and I was reading on couch.

At the doorbell, I crouched beneath the sofa. Dan crawled over to me.

"Is he gone?" he whispered. (Later, Dan said he was only crawling around the floor to make fun of me.)

I don't know what is wrong with us (or, probably, mostly me). Maybe we don't like answering the door for the same reason we don't like answering the phone. Leave a brochure, and we will think about our decision to give money to your cause.

Otherwise, we end up with fast food discount cards we never use or $5 "cookie mix" that consists of a bag of flour and Quaker Instant Oats.

"Maybe we should just get a sign that says, 'No Solicitors,' so we don't have to crawl around all the time," Dan suggested the other day.

"Maybe we should just get a sign that says, 'No People in General,'" I said.

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