From Now On, the Toddler Answers the Door

For some reason, people with the audacity to knock on your door and interrupt your home life with their bullshit, and it's pretty much always bullshit, really bother me. I basically hate them, which comes through when I open the door.

I generally use "What do you want?" as a greeting. I know. Just don't open the door. Maybe I like the confrontation. Maybe I want to teach some lessons about bothering assholes in their homes. Not sure.

So yesterday's visitor, he's got a completely unconvincing open about how he's new to the neighborhood, but he's not selling anything and he's not a Jehovah's Witness.

"So far so good," I said. "What do you want?" I repeated.

This prompted a long-winded speech, about how he works for some financial planning something and he has some dvds with info from Prudential but he's not from Prudential but anyway it's information to look at and then call them (?), they don't take your money (!) but they can help you in these uncertain financial times.  He pauses a couple times during this speech to ask if I'm ok or if he's offended me, probably because while the arms that opened the door are very polite, my face is another story altogether.

I'm about to say some shit to shut him down about how it's so likely that he's going door-to-door to help his "new neighbors" out of the goodness of his heart, no other incentive for him in these uncertain financial times...and I'm unsure how much acid is going to spill out of my mouth...

And then my two-year-old, Logan, walks up to the door, leans out through the gap between my leg and the door, peers at the man, and shows me how it's fucking done.

"Pizza?" he asks the guy.

"Oh, how cute!" the guy says.

"Pizza?" the kid repeats. "I want it, pizza. Pizza?" He looks at this dude with some real disappointment. "Pizza."

The man decidedly does not have any pizza, and says so.

"Pizza, I want pizza." my toddler tries again. "Piiiiiizzzzzzaaaaa."

The man tries to relaunch his spiel about the future and finances and whatever like I'm the biggest rube in the world. Come on, dude. Really? A real smooth operator would jump on this cute kid and ride that as his "in" to the obviously devoted mommy, standing amused at the door, mostly looking down at her kid, smiling for the first time since the whole thing started. He must be new at this.

Logan starts to close the door. I back away. The guy keeps talking.

"Pizza?" the kid asks, one last time.

"No pizza" the guy says.

Logan's heard enough. He closes the door. I help him push it all the way shut.

I fall down laughing. Jason and Steve have also watched this whole thing. They start laughing, too. Logan starts laughing because we're laughing. Then he asks for pizza again.

We feed Logan some leftover pizza. I could not be prouder. I tell him how proud I am, and that he's the best baby in the whole world. He's not a baby anymore, though. A baby wouldn't have asked for pizza. Maybe breadsticks.

Later that day, Jason found this under our doormat:

Which means this guy heard us laughing, among other things. Still, this note is easily the best thing he did the entire time.

Truly, though, the next time a solicitor shows up at the door, I'm going to ask for pizza.