Taco Bell Delivers?!

Bong, bong, bong, bong...The Westminster Chime of the doorbell reverberated throughout the house, imperiously beckoning me to do it's bidding.

"Hang on, McD.  I have to answer the door."

I pulled myself off the couch and with no small amount of trepidation, headed for the front hallway.  I didn't want to answer the door.  Experience had taught me that it was usually a salesman and usually one for the rival utility company; one intent on "saving me money" if he could just "have a few moments of my time", because did I know that EnergyRUs has the highest rates around?! and didn't I think it was time to change? Well, it never ended up being a few moments and I never saved any money.  And for that matter, after doing my research, all their rates are quite comparable.  Paul was in class, so I was home alone and experience had also taught me that the dreaded salespeople left much more quickly when he answered the door.  But, despite several post-salesman pep talks to the effect of "next time I'll just ignore the doorbell", I had never convinced myself to do so.  Always in the back of my mind was the niggling thought that this time, it might be someone I know with a legitimate emergency.

So, here I was.  Walking to the front door, trying furiously to come up with the most effective, yet nicest (after all, I didn't want them thinking of me as a total jerk), brush off.  No thank you, we're not interested in energy. We make our own out of human hair and dog poo. Or what about: c-c-c-cable?  What is this of which you are speaking? Or maybe a nice simple No habla Ingles.  Or better yet Ich spreche kein Englisch because the chances of them speaking Spanish are far greater than of them speaking German. 

Thus, armed with several, if I do say so myself, excellent brush-off lines, I reached my front door.  I threw back the deadbolt and pulled open a protesting door (the doorbell may have been eager to be acknowledged, but the door itself was quite content just being there).

The sight that greeted me was so startling and unexpected that all my carefully crafted responses flew out of my head, leaving just one coherent sentence ricocheting through my brain. Taco Bell delivers?

Standing in front of me on the other side of the glass screen door was a young man, probably in his mid-teens.  The word 'punk' might be an appropriate descriptor, but I am not an 85 year old man with a cane and a lawn to protect. He had on skinny jeans, big shoes, and one of those black hoodies with neon symbols all over it.  His hair was all emo-ed out, covering his entire face in a very I-wanted-to-look-anime-but-I-didn't-have-enough-mousse-to-make-it-actually-stand-up sort of way.

"May I help you?"
"Uh, yeah, uh, could I like, uh, come in for a few minutes?  See there's this cop following me and, uh, I have, uh, like, some weed, and I just thought......."

He trailed off awkwardly and I just stared at him as I tried to process what I'd just heard.  "Cop" "Weed" and "Come in" rattled around in my brain.  Wait. What?! He wants to come in to my house?! To hide from the cops?! He kept looking around nervously, very much on edge and as I finally figured out what he was saying, he lifted his hand toward the screen door as if to open it.  That woke me up and I summoned my best teacher voice.

"No, you may not come in.  You're on your own. You're going to have to live with the consequences."
"But, just for a...."
"No."

He looked at me a second longer and then hung his head and hitched up his pants and he turned to shuffle away in his too-big shoes. I resisted the urge to throw the words "punk" or "hooligan" or "get off my lawn" at his retreating figure (hmmm maybe I am more like an 85 year old man with a cane than I know) as I shut and dead-bolted the door and put the phone back to my ear.

"McD? You are never going to believe this...."

I hope my house doesn't get TPed.