There was a knock at the front door. The door that welcomes you to my home with a brick path flanked by day lillies, fluttering moths and lazy streams of sunshine streaking across the grass. It's the kind of house that seems to sigh, Come on in, with the falling of every rose petal.
My house and I are very different. I just want people to screw off.
If I know you, that's one thing. But if you walk up my pretty path looking to sell me, convince me, switch me or beg me you can either turn around and go away or prepare to get your ass kicked by a spinning and kicking tiny blonde blur. This is my house, my home. It isn't a drop in centre for people who think I have money that I just don't want anymore. And no ... I don't make exceptions for charities. I have my preferred charities and nothing makes me feel less charitable than you standing on my porch making me feel like an asshole because you aren't one of them.
Also if I wanted to switch cable providers do you know what I'd do? I'd switch cable providers, on my own, from the comfort of my binge watching couch at 2:00 in the morning after having problems bringing up the latest season of House of Cards. That is what I would do.
So finally, the other night after a particularly curious encounter at my door I said this is stupid. I'm old. I'm allowed to do things old crotchety people would do. I already save tin foil ... I'm halfway there to old person crazy.
I sat down and whipped up a No Soliciting sign. It had lots of swear words and I guess if taken out of context could possibly have been viewed as a hate crime, but only towards people with fake laminated badges. Something about strangling, and burying, and Kimchi, strangely enough. I don't know, I can't really remember, I was in a bit of a state. Luckily, just when I was about to laminate it up, I also sobered up and decided to take another, less aggressive crack at it. I mean I'm old and crotchety, but I'm not that old and crotchety.
And this is what I came up with.
Download one of the PDFs below to print your own
And not to worry. I still laminated the other one and put it in a shoe box. As soon as I start getting annoyed with kids stepping on my grass or making a lot of "racket", I'll know the day has come to crack it open.
Have a good weekend!
Cindy
My sides hurt because I am laughing so hard!!!! Think I want to read the original though. There would be some great content in the gut reaction of that first draft. When I am home...I am home. Unless I share a last name with you or have professed great love for you...call first!!!!! I am not a fan of drop in visitors.
Monique
Hi..just found your blog...Pinterest..Harvesting Garlic..
It's my first year and ..well..so many different opinions..so I did it..this morning..so excited..wish I had planted twice as much..
Thanks for the tips..
I am like you..but strangely enough.the door rang IN my screened-in porch..no one does that.. adorable thirtysomething girl selling CDs..she had a rock version and a soft version.I actually bought her CD as she was irresistible..and an artist.
But the soft..was rock...imagine the rock;)
mariah
Dear Karen,
After visiting my house where I have begun to grow veggies in my front yard (in addition to my community garden plot) a friend suggested that I should read your blog. She didn't even mention that you are a fellow Canadian (I am a transplant in America)! I admit that I had a serious crush on you after reading just a few posts. Now, I think I might be in love.... :) Thank you for writing a blog that is informative, interesting, well-written and full of snark (along with gardening, my hobbies include proper grammar and swearing). Ok, now off to read your most recent post before I finish building our chicken coop!
:)
Rose
I'm speechless Jeffrey. Gotta love a "Gentleman", but I think you're living in the past. I get very uncomfortable when a strange man comes to my door and tries to come in uninvited. Like the one who came to my door at 9:00 at night, it was dark and he wanted money for his sick wife. I said no, he went to my friend's house next house and I called the cops.
Jeffrey Mathews
Respectfully Ma'am, under those circumstances, you d the right thing IF this happened in a country where there is a social services network as we have here in the States or Canada.
I do not deny that there are evil people in the world. I was a Public Defender right out of law school and my brother was a homicide detective with a very large urban police force on the west coast.
I know evil when I see it and apply Edmond Burke's admonition from his essay "Reflections on the Revolution in France (1792):
"In the end, the only safety for good men is in believing all possible evil of bad men."
Cynthia Jones
Jeffery, Get your own blog. There is an obvious need to be heard and you will enjoy it immensely.
You have a lot to say about yourself, judgement, religion, damnation and your family history.
It will be very rewarding for you, keep you busy and you get to be the boss of it.
Cynthia Jones
Jeffery, Anyone who follows a statement that implies they are taking responsbility for a wrongdoing with the word "However" is not sincere.
It shows they have not respected the boundaries of the person who has told them they are crossing a boundary.
You are crossing boundaries on someone else's site. Show some respect.
Jeffrey Mathews
I find myself in a minority here, It is not that I like solicitors or am lonely for company. But I seem to have some appreciation that there are in fact human beings on the other side of the door and I would imagine that cold calling of any sort is truly a tough way to make a living. I cannot imagine most people who do that enjoy doing that but perhaps it is the only job available to them and they need to keep a roof over their head and food on the table.
I tell myself that there but for the Grace of God, go I and extend to anyone who knocks for whatever reason a certain minimal standard of humanity, care, and concern. In the end we cannot know what it was that brought that human being to that job and to my door. I'd like to think I would balance that obligation against mere personal inconvenience or distractions to myself.
And, no, I have never had any employment that required this kind of cold contact. But I do know others who have had to do this and I have heard how hard and discouraging this is to do.
All of you; class acts all the way.
Karen
Oh Jeffrey. I'm sorry you feel that way about this post. You're right. We're all a bunch of classless assholes and you're probably better off somewhere else because you'll find nothing but more of the same on this site. ~ karen!
Karen
p.s. I notice you've been a subscriber since 2013 and yet the one and only comment you've made on this site is one that is negative. I think that is more telling than anything else. ~ karen
Jeffrey Mathews
Your site; your rules. However as I approach my 70th year, I have found generally that what goes around, eventually comes around.
As it happens, I am a professed and believing Roman Catholic by conversion so having strangers who have a different understanding of our faith knock on my door might seem to pose a problem. Nevertheless, I do invite them in, take their literature, and thank them for stopping by.
As I said, it does not take much courage or decency to be crude or ill mannered in return. And I hardly think asking whether better ends are served by putting oneself in another persons shoes is in any way negative. It is perhaps, only an application of the Golden Rule.
My family, by the way, moved to Louisiana right after the American Revolution in which they fought. My ancestors were with the Colonial Scouts on the Plains of Abraham and at Louisbourge (sic) a decade earlier. There is a story that all good Southern men are told at the feet of their grandmothers about Robert E. Lee.
When Lee and the Army were moving through Maryland, in one town a "free man of color" saw Lee and took off his hat and bowed to him. Lee stopped, dismounted from Traveler and came up to the man. Lee then bowed and put out his hand and shook the hand of the astonished Marylander. When some of the staff commented about this action, all Lee said was that: "This gentleman was kind enough to pay me a complement and I returned his kindness with my own. I should not like anyone to think he were more a gentleman than I."
My family goes straight back on my mothers' side to the first 104 at Jamestown: My fathers' to 3 on the Mayflower. Not once in 4 centuries have the men ever forgotten that they were gentlemen. And I hope and trust when my time comes, those that I leave behind will remember my as such a gentleman.
Karen
Yes Jeffrey I get it. You're a good person the rest of us are not. You're going to heaven, we're going to hell and are bad people for putting a lighthearted sign on our gates. Got it. ~ karen!
Jeffrey Mathews
My belief ma'am is that in the end we shall all be judged by the actions that we did not take, the goodness we did not do, and the kindness we did not show.
Karen
Jeffrey? That's enough. We all get it. We all understand you're the good person here. You've told us over and over again. Which by the way, a gentleman rarely does. ~ karen
Pam
Well, I guess there are advantages to living in an apartment building 'cause solicitors cannot get in and go door to door. (Of course that also means I can't buy Girl Scout cookies from the comfort of my home. And I do like the Thin Mints.) Being in the first apartment, however, delivery folks and others do often ring my bell. I guess when the intended person isn't home they ring my apartment hoping I'll just buzz the building door open. (I don't!) It's kinda annoying so maybe I should make my own variation of your sign just for that situation. Now to figure out the perfect wording....
Miriam
When I get calls from the duct cleaners I make sure to ask them which company they are calling from and get their details. Then I tell them I am on the Do Not Call list and will be reporting them. They hang up on me.
As for those coming to the front door (which is, unfortunately, clear glass), I just let my Malinois hurl herself against it, and make "sorry, dog is nuts" motions.
Mothercarol
This is my fave for phone solicitors. "I won't be able to take advantage of that because I'm beginning a ten year sentence for mail fraud later this week. I don't want to make any commitments until after I'm released"
Debbie
How to avoid solicitors: Live on a long dead end street that most people don't know exists. Have a lot of land between said street and the house. Have a wonderful neighborhood where there is a dog at every house who will back incessantly at any stranger coming to the door. No signs needed. Not a single trick-or -treater in the three years we've lived here and the trash collectors take time out to play with the dog. And we are twenty minutes from the border of a large city. I love where I live! I am also crotchety and I love your blog.
kim
Karen, I read this post this morning while having breakfast & you made my day! So did the comments I saw before work! I need to make the sign for the guy who is trying to sell me vaccum cleaner bags, really, doesn't every one have bagless vaccums like me?
Shauna
Done. Printed and laminated! I have simple but pretty 'no soliciting' on my door, but the charities still knock . And, when I point to the sign, they have the nerve to tell me, 'oh, we're not soliciting, we're a charity'. I reply, 'in the eyes of the law and city code, you are most certainly a solicitor.' Grrrr, what makes them think a grumpy person with that sign will want to give them money...especially when they decide to argue with said grump?
Kim from Milwaukee
If they come in your gate, ignoring your sign, you could always lob some rotten tomatoes at them from a hidden spot on your lovely porch....they won't soon forget to avoid your house.
Irene
Reading all these comments, I have to say that I kinda envy you guys. Here, in Johannesburg, South Africa, we don't get solicitors coming to our front doors because we ALL have some or all of the following:
Enormous walls, razor or barbed wire, electric fences, motion activated beams, large guard dogs, panic buttons, armed response, 24 hour security guards etc etc, and the armed f*&%*!rs still get in and beat up and / or shoot little old ladies for their electronic goods and such.
I miss the days when we had no tall walls and where people respected our boundaries. :'(
My country is beautiful and the majority of people are warm and friendly and smile a lot. It just takes that evil element, and we are the prisoners.
Lez
Irene, I feel your pain. As a fellow South African I also envy the commenters their problem! We ARE prisoners in our own homes in our beloved country. And as against the people writing here that they feel better living in remote areas, it is the complete opposite here. There is a Genocide going on here that the world doesn't seem to know about. One white farmer killed on average every 39 hours in the past 3 years is an horrific statistic. Once the farmers are all gone, our country is lost. So very sad.
Irene
Cry, the beloved country.
Kelli
In another life we'd be besties, ah swayer. I too am getting older and crotchetier (that a word? is now). Plus I'm single. And I have a cat. And I still rent. So, hey, you're a step up. :) Love the idea of a 'no soliciting' sign but here's what I've found out: people don't know what that means, and it doesn't work. I sit in the front office at work and we have a lovely no soliciting sign on our door, but does that stop 'em? Nope. Everyone thinks they are a special exception. Maybe I need to take Julian's advice, and put up a No Tresspassing sign instead!
jainegayer
LMAO
Gail
I LOVE it!! Printed out 5 of them ASAP! You must read my mind- here I am, sitting on the front porch, minding MY own beeswax, sometimes in PJ's and up the steps comes some uninvited *&^%#$)&&*. You know what I mean. This sign is going up right in front of them on the glass door! I should have enlarged it, so they could see it before even starting up the walkway...... sigh.
SusanR
SusanO, very sorry about your mom. Sounds like the people who came to her door might have been from the Westboro Baptist Church. Do folks in Canada know about them?
Karen, I don't know the average age of your readers. But judging from the number of woman named "Susan", I would guess you have a lot of baby boomers. I always say that 4 out of every 3 women my age are named "Susan". There were always at least 3 in my classes at school.
IRS
Oh yes. Westboro. They are the assholes who come to the funerals of dead service members, carrying signs that say things like "God hates dead soldiers", because they truly believe that homosexuality (and society's increasing acceptance of it, and of same sex marriage) makes God angry, and that is why He makes bad things happen. These wing nuts are mostly from one large, inbred family, and their patriarch, the preacher of their church, recently died. I hope he is roasting someplace. Although Canada has its own whackadoodles, speaking as someone who spends at least a quarter of every year in the south eastern US, I can honestly say that there are more crazies per capita there than here. Maybe it's because we as a nation are far less religious than our US neighbours.
Lisa
How timely! After several encounters of our own recently with young men who just don't seem to take "no, I'm not interested." as an answer (seriously, it seems like I can't even keep the porch light on in the evenings anymore, it draws them like moths!) I made a no soliciting yesterday myself. Sheesh, I felt old and crotchety too. Thankfully, I'm old enough not to care too much about the feelings of uninvited, unappreciated callers. Good for you!
Liz
I enjoy the arrow haha! Just a slim and elegant symbol saying "that waaaay.... not this way"
Gordy
Karen, you have moved from interesting blogger find of the year to hero status with this! I have tears running down my face with laughter and a sign I'll soon laminate, after I find a laminator of course.
Well done and wishing you peace and tranquility.