A secret knock

I think we've established why I don't answer my front door. Right?

But sometimes (rarely) I'm really sorry about that:
Like when I don't answer my door and my VTers leave delicious cookies on the step and I don't even get to thank them properly or invite them in.
Or when it's my neighbor who just needs to borrow a key, but I didn't know it was her and I didn't answer and  now one of us has to make an extra trip CLEAR down the street to hand off the keys.
Or when it's the fedex guy, and he can't just leave the package and now I have to stay home tomorrow between the hours of 10 and 4 just in case he stops by since me driving to their office in the-middle-of-nowhere is as likely as me answering my door when I don't know who it is.

That's when I wish there was a secret "you want to answer this knock"-knock. Not the one that everybody (including the salesmen) know. (Did you just do that one in your head? Me too. But I don't know how to type it.) But a whole new secret one. Or perhaps a hidden doorbell that only nice people I love know about.

Or perhaps a security system that scans their fingerprint while they ring the bell and announces through my house who is here and what they want. "JOHN SMITH HERE WITH A CLIPBOARD AND A BROCHURE ABOUT  HOW YOU CAN SAVE UP TO THOUSANDS-asterisk OF DOLLARS BY SPENDING JUST $10 ON THIS SIMPLE COUPON BOOK WHICH WILL PUT HIM THROUGH COLLEGE AND PURIFY WATER IN AFGHANISTAN WHILE SUPPORTING ANY OF THESE 19  PRE-APPROVED CAUSES YOU BELIEVE IN AND BUYING YOU 12 MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR THE NEXT 3 YEARS. PLUS HE'LL CLEAN YOUR WINDOWS AND YOUR CARPETS FOR FREE." my exceptionally intelligent computer house would say to me. And I'd click "ignore" (like on facebook) and all future knocks/rings would be silenced. Or "SISTER SMITH WITH A PLATE OF COOKIES AND A HANKERIN' FOR A GOOD CONVERSATION." the computer house would say in it's best southern accent because only in the South and in Utah do you eat what people bring on a paper plate and say "hankerin'".

If that existed it would've taken me only 4 and a half minutes to answer the door last night when Aundrea came instead of the full 10. And since it was 8pm and she hadn't been home from work yet, I bet she would've appreciated the extra 5.5 minutes.

Fortunately she knows that the secret "you want to answer this knock"-knock is:
1 ring of the doorbell
2 phone calls (both unanswered) on not-my-cell-phone
1 ring of the doorbell
1 knock

If you're willing to go to all that trouble, you'll likely get 1 embarrassed bath-robe-ed Amy with drippy neck-hair answering the door after dark while trying to explain that it really does take 4 and a half minutes to get out of the tub and I didn't think I wanted to answer until the phone rang the first time anyway so I'm so sorry you've been standing on my dragon-fly infested porch for the past 10 minutes waiting to tell me that you love me and I'll likely survive the rest of this pregnancy.

Dear Aundrea, Thanks for stopping by. Let's invent a slightly-less-time-consuming secret knock sometime eh? Love, Amy