BECAUSE I'M AN IDIOT, THAT'S WHY

I have often said the phrase "I've never felt so stupid in my life."  It's one of those hyperbolic things that you'd say when you forget your debit card at Wal-Mart or forget where you park your car.  However, I've never meant it quite as much as I mean it now.  I'm fairly certain you'll agree with me.

I'd taken the day off last Thursday.  I was sitting in the living room eating lunch and watching TV when someone knocked on the door.  The knock was cheerful, so I thought it was the lady across the street (who incidentally is the only one of our neighbors who comes to our house, usually.)  I answered the door and two girls were standing there.  They said that they were collecting votes that would help them win a scholarship.  I honestly can't tell you why my brain didn't engage right then, I'd like to think it was because I'm just a nice person, but I think it's because I'm stupid.   I said I'd vote for them and they asked to come inside because it was so cold, so I let them in {STUPID #1.}  I didn't really understand what it was that they were asking me to do, but it turned out that they were collecting votes: i.e. selling subscriptions to magazines that were donated to a children's hospital and the ones with the most subscriptions would win this contest.  I'd had a similar thing happen a year or so ago when a girl from our neighborhood came by and asked for donations for a school thing, so I thought this was the same thing.  I realized pretty quickly that this was different all together when one of the girls pulled out a receipt book and started writing out a receipt but, I still wasn't catching on.  They were starting to make me nervous, because they kept getting really close to me and I kept having to step back.  The thought actually went through my head that I'd have to fight them off because they were close enough to stab me.  That didn't happen, of course.   One of them asked to use my bathroom, and I said OK {STUPID #2} but that's when it hit me that something weird was going on.  I stood where I could see the bathroom door as the other girl showed me the receipt, which was for way more money than I could pay her at that point, so she wrote another one for half (only one outrageously overpriced magazine subscription instead of two) and so I moved over the write a check, hoping they'd leave if I did that.  The only time the bathroom door was out of sight was while I was writing that check, but the girl had been in there a long time.  I know the girl never used the bathroom, because the toilet never flushed, and she had opened the bathroom door very quietly, because when I walked back to the door of the living room, I looked up and she was standing there in the bathroom doorway.  When she walked back to me, her demeanor was very different, so I'm fairly certain she took a hit of something while in the bathroom, which pissed me off.  I started looking at her to see if she had anything of ours on her, but I couldn't tell.  They started asking me all kinds of questions about Butler, about this and that, but I finally got them out of my house. 

I ran around looking to see if anything was missing and I didn't notice anything.  I'm very grateful that I had been wearing my grandmother's wedding band, which would have been in plain sight of the girl in the bathroom had I left it where I usually do while I'm taking a shower.  I looked up the name of the business that they said they were working for and saw that it is fairly well considered to be a scam.  The main complaints were about not getting magazines that were ordered, but since the business lives in a kind of loophole where they are technically within the law, they are allowed to operate.  I know that girl was looking for stuff in my bathroom, and I know they were trying to get a look at what we had in the house while they were in there.  They were very good at trying to distract me, but I still have no idea why it took so long for me to realize what they were doing!  Of course, now they have one of my checks and they've been inside my house.  I'm pretty much terrified that they are either going to try and get into my bank account, or come back and rob my house.  Not that we have anything valuable that we leave lying around, but still.  Ugh.  I'm so stupid.  If I can get off relatively cheaply by the business just cashing my check and no magazines getting sent, I'll consider myself lucky. 

Seriously, though...this is the dumbest I've ever felt, and if you know me, you know that's saying something!