Most couples argue over the usual things- money, housework, and strippers. My wife and I? We argue over her willingness to let terrorists into our house. Here’s the situation:
On Saturday at about noon I was sipping my tea and reading Margaret Wente’s vacuous Upper Canadian whining in the Globe and Mail when our doorbell rang. Normally I would just turn off the lights and hide behind the sofa until the threat subsides, but darling wife was quick to answer the door and appease the 11 year old boy selling tickets for some pathetic school fundraiser. I kept my head buried in the Globe, thinking that maybe schools should cut out music classes to save money instead of bugging me on my lazy Saturday morning. But then I felt something uncanny, that strange and inexplicable sensation when you can feel that somebody is staring at you. I lifted my gaze from the dining room table to see… an 11 year old ginger kid staring me down.
Jebus! I thought. It’s okay, remember your training… aim for his trachea… But darling wife was right behind him, handing him our phone. There was no way I could execute a clean roundhouse kick with her standing there. “He had to use the phone to call his mom,” she said. I gritted my teeth and turned my attention back to my newspaper, waiting for Little Osama to leave.
He made his call and left, and the door had barely closed behind him when I leaped from my seat. “Dude!” I said to wifey, “What was that?!?”
“I just let him call his mom”, wifey replied. “Do you think he was going to rob us or something?” she said, tauntingly.
“Not necessarily”, I said. “But he may have been casing the joint, or reporting back to somebody who will. Or maybe he’ll tell his mom that we did freaky sex things to him. Or he could have been a suicide bomber, for all you know.”
“A suicide bomber?” she asked, incredulously. That probably wasn’t my best example.
“You’re just too trusting,” I said, trying to defuse things a little.
“No, you’re just too paranoid,” darling wife replied. This was starting to sound like a debate between Jack Bauer and Mother Theresa. “He was just a little boy. I should have offered him some milk and cookies.” Hey, *I* don’t get milk and cookies, and now you’re going to offer them to a potential terrorist? I didn’t actually say that part, but I totally should have. Then, in the dry, humourous way that reminds me why I love her, wifey says “Gee, I really should wipe down the phone in case he put anthrax on it…”
Darling wife is extremely tolerant of my paranoia abundance of caution in matters of personal safety. If we’re driving home and the same car has been behind for more than a few turns, she has come to accept that I’ll drive right past our house and circle back just to make sure I’m not being followed. And she accepts that my emergency kit contains canned goods and weapons. But apparently my unwillingness to let a strange youth into our house to access our telecommunications system (a.k.a. letting a kid call his mom) is going too far.
I think my caution is reasonable and prudent:
- He could be an innocent kid, but could also be up to no good. Maybe years of dealing with amateur criminals and petty thugs have soured my perception, but I don’t trust anybody. Especially not redheads.
- Sure I can overpower a kid, but not a kid with a weapon and an attitude.
- Hasn’t this kid ever been taught about “stranger danger”? Why didn’t his parents teach him not to go into strangers’ houses? By letting him in, I’d just be encouraging a dangerous practice.
- I don’t need some kid claiming that wifey and I went all Bernardo and Homolka on him.
- What kid these days doesn’t have his own cell phone (probably nicer than mine)?!? A kid who needs a ploy to get inside my house, that’s who.
Wifey thinks I’ve become a grumpy, paranoid old man:
- He’s just a kid!
- It’s not like it was a lone adult inviting a kid inside- that’s just creepy. Both of us were home.
- He’s just a kid!
What say you? Would you let a strange child inside your house to use the phone, or would you turn him away?
UPDATE: As I was putting out my garbage this morning, my neighbor approached me and told me to check my car. It turns out that someone had broken into several cars on our street overnight (but luckily not ours). Almost certainly the work of nefarious 11 year olds who had been scoping out the neighborhood. ;)
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Any kid of that age who approaches a stranger’s home alone is likely up to something. I would have placed the call to his Mom for him while he waited outside. If Mom didn’t answer, I would have called the police.
I can only imagine the greetings the girl guides get when they try to poison you with those cookies.
As a parent: This is why I homeschool, why I’ve always refused to let my children engage in the practice of blackmailing neighbors and family members with fundraising gimmics, and why we have cell phones. I sure as shooting don’t want them walking into some strangers home!
As a grumpy old woman: I’d have taken one of our handsets to the door for the kid to use (or don’t you have cordless phones up there in the frozen north yet?).
At least your little terrorist doesn’t live next door. We had two such little terrorists move into the rental next door this summer. I assure you I’ve been a lot more vigilant about locking my car doors since they arrived.
HEY! We’re all not inherently evil! Just because I have red hair doesn’t mean I am totally whacked. So most redheads have ADHD. Gotta go, something shiny just caught my attention.
Oh, how I love your wife- you guys kill me. You kill me like an adolescent ginger kid on a neighbourhood-casing rampage who… never mind.
Maybe your car DIDN’T get broken into because she let the kid use the phone, either because it was him doing it, or some weird karmic accounting.
And yeah, I thought of the cordless phone thing, too. The kid should’ve asked if you had one- I was taught never to go into a stranger’s house.
I too thought that maybe your car didn’t get broken into because your wife DID let the kid call his mom! LOL. However, I would have brought him the cordless phone and let him stand outside unless it was like today here in Ottawa, icy cold with 2 inches of snow!