…for the cops to show up at your house looking for someone you’ve never heard of or met?

Probably not.

This just happened to me. No, really. Someone started pounding on my door in that loud, authoritative important pounding sort of way. I paused my DVD. They knocked again. I looked outside, and notice that there was a cop car blocking my driveway. Maybe. Cop cars all look fake, to me.

So, third knock. I alert Gremlin, and dig up a sweater. Then I answer the door.

“Um…”
“[Person they were looking for]?”
“No.”
“May we come in?”
“No.”

Most certainly no. Little me, three very large them, all strategically spaced to make me feel very, very trapped.

“What’s your name?”

I tell them.

“Who are you married to?”
“Nobody.”
“Do you know [Person they were looking for]?”
“No.”
“[Another person’s name]?”
“No.”
“What was your name again?”

I repeat my name, thinking that they’re trying to trap me, because they think I’m pretending to have a different name.

“Why are you shaking?”
“You scared me.”

That’s the short version of the answer. The actual answer was, “I suffer from fairly severe anxiety issues and tend to have panic attacks when multiple large authority figures in uniforms [and armed!] show up at my door looking for anything, or even happen to be in line in front of me at the grocery store, or driving by me while I’m walking. All I can really think of right now is that something has obviously gone terribly wrong, and the next thing that’s going to happen will involve me being beaten and possibly raped and there will be nothing I can do about it because you’re Authority Figures.”

…you can probably guess why I opted for the shorter, slightly less honest version of the answer.

There are a couple of blank spots. The last thing I remember is the cop saying, “Here’s your door.”

After I shut the door, Gremlin went out to check the mail, startled one of the cops, and talked to him for a minute.

The person they were looking for was the previous owner of the house. I think they left the house a year before we even looked into buying anything. And, honestly? The cops should know this sort of thing.

I’m not going to be sleeping for a while. Or possibly even leaving the house. Because I really, really don’t want these people coming back and deciding that, since nobody’s home, it’s time to break down the damned door, all because they didn’t do a simple record search….

It’s going to be a bad week.