Ding dong door-to-door soliciting.

Both my wife and daughter were napping, so I was enjoying a relatively quiet Saturday afternoon today until two people came and rang my doorbell. If you're like me simply hearing a knock at the door or ringing of the doorbell sets off your Spidey sense. Ever since Ed McMahon died, I quit holding out for the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. If I'm expecting guests it's one thing, but when out of the blue someone comes calling, I immediately start to suspect mischief is afoot.

In our home, when someone signals their arrival at the front door our dog goes nuts. While my suspicion is that if someone were to ever break into our house, our Irish Terrier would go running to the doggie toy basket to grab something for the burglar to throw, his bark can sometimes come across as more vicious than his bite especially to those who don't know him. Our exterminator for instance is afraid of him, but then again those exterminators are a unique people unto themselves

Since my first guess as to who a mystery guest might be is usually someone who's selling aluminum siding or religion, I seldom run up and greet him with an open door and a smiling face. Instead, I cautiously tiptoe to the front hallway making sure to try and avoid being seen through the windows by whoever's on the other side. Our door isn't outfitted with a peephole so I just have to stand several feet away and discreetly peer through the slats of the shutters.

This time it was a forty-something couple. The man was thin with white hair and the woman was a heavyset blond with a poor dye job. She was holding a Christmas gift bag that contained something heavy enough to make the bottom sag. Even though curiosity was pushing me to open the door and find out what tidings they were offering, I decided I would find greater comfort and joy back in my comfy Rooms to Go chair. They didn't give me long to make the decision because shortly after they rang the doorbell, they decided to turn around and make their offering to my next-door neighbor instead. Maybe they were turned off by the dog.

Later this afternoon I discovered the mystery couple had left a flier on my door for presidential candidate Ron Paul. I'm not really up on Ron Paul so I don't know how glad or disappointed I should be that I didn't open the door. A brief perusal of his website shows pages labeled Homeschoolers for Ron Paul and Gun owners for Ron Paul. Incidentally why is homeschoolers supposedly one word while gun owners is two? Am I the only person who's bothered by this?

I will refrain from littering my website with my political views on home schooling and gunownership or anything else for that matter, not because I don't have views. It's just because I think if you are a member of the elite intelligetsia that reads my website, you probably are secure enough in your own political views that you could care less what mine or anyone else's are. If on the other hand you're one of those who needs someone else to tell you what you value and believe, send me a tax deductible donation of $20 and I will be glad to write you back outlining what social ills to indulge in and what books to light afire.

Just kidding. It wouldn't really be tax deductible, but I would gladly accept.

What I do wonder about though is what success door-to-door solicitors have with their product. I politely slammed the door on two Mormon proselytizers a couple weeks ago and wondered the same thing. OK, I didn't exactly slam the door in their faces. I shut it gently, but the conversation went something like this:

Me: [struggling not to spill cheap red wine while holding back a badly behaved 45-pound dog by the collar as I smile at two twenty-something Mormons holding a copy of the book thereof] Hey! How y'all doin' today?

Mitt and Moroni: Great, and you?

Me: [still smiling] Good, good. [Door closes.]

They, like the Ron Paul supporters, didn't stick around long before moving on to my neighbor's house. I really wished I could have followed them over there too since the neighbor's English is limited. He can say "hello" and ask "How are you?" when he gifts us fresh vegetables from his garden, but somehow I think the Latter Day followers may have run into a language barrier had they tried to convince him of Joseph Smith's prophetic abilities or that the ancient nation of Zion will be rebuilt in downtown Salt Lake. I'm just guessing.

Someday I'm going to ask one of these guys what their close ratio is. I mean out of all the doors they knock on trying to market their religion, how many people say to them Where can I sign up?

And these political campaigners? Out of all the doors they knock on, how many people say to them Ya know, I was in the middle of an online Scrabble game when you arrived, but since I have limited intelligence and don't have any clue what the presidential race is all about, I'm just gonna vote for your candidate?

Give me a break!

Now, I don't want anyone reading this to think I just pick on religious minorities or the politically zealous. Last year one of the neighbor kids rang my doorbell wanting to sell me cripcraps in order to benefit his school. I was perhaps a little more polite to him than I am to most, but he basically got the same smiling abrupt treatment.

I've taught in the public school system, and I'm well aware of where money ends up. I didn't tell the neighbor kid this, but if his parents want his school to have more money for something, they should look first to the board and the superintendent. That's where the decisions are made and any subsequent monies are mis-allocated or squandered.

Want more shekels for Johnny's classroom supplies? Look at how much money gets spent in the transportation department. Kids whose "behavior disorders" merit their own personal one-passenger bus complete with driver? Ch ching!

I remember the days when someone ringing a doorbell was likely a neighbor offering fresh cookies or a school chum wanting you to come out and play, but sadly those days ended during the Reagan administration along with hyperrealism, mood rings and the final season of Mork & Mindy. Now a knock at the door usually alerts us to the fact that we're about to become the next thread in a blanket solicitation, the product being religion, politics or cripcraps. And I'm not sure which one of them is worse.

Well, between those three it's probably a tie between politics and religion.

I don't know though. Cripcraps ain't all they used to be either.

Remember Creepy Crawlers? Oh, wait a minute. I meant Wacky Walkers. Either way, those were some quality cripcraps.