I look again through the peephole, then cautiously open the door, but am surprised to find out Jesse's no kid, but a guy that's probably in his 30s. (I hadn't been able to determine his age through the peephole). Now my motive changes to getting rid of him, but he quickly goes into a spiel about selling children's books and magazines to "earn a trip to Hawaii." Something else nebulous bothers me. Then, a complication happens: my 3 year old runs over, grabs my leg and tries to see what's going on. My focus is now split between Jesse and my kid (who disobeys my command to go sit with my wife).
Anyway, in short order I tell Jesse "no thanks" and he politely leaves (well, I actually told him twice), and all is well. Then I start to realize what made me uncomfortable. The first obvious thing was the time of day. Enough elsewhere has been said about that. The second thing was that when I first looked through the peephole, there was a split-second when I thought I saw him glance or maybe say something quick to someone else. But it was so subtle that I didn't process that til later. Then, when he was talking about the books/magazines he was supposedly selling, all he could show for it was a single brochure. So, beyond just no product to display (which I know this is how some types of sales work) not even a brochure to give out. Jesse either had poor salesmanship, or the thing was a fraud. Or, if I'm to believe him, he had just "one more book to sell," and thus was out of brochures. Either way, I wasn't interested at all, and anyways have a pretty rigid policy against buying stuff from door-to-door types. Especially at night. I also realized later that I've never met a "selling-magazines-for-points" guy as old as this one. Who only gave a first name and no further credentials. All of these factors together made my alarms go off, though it wasn't until later that I figured out all the reasons why. Hooray for instincts.
As for the "Never Again"-ness of this story, it was letting my 3-year old stay there with me. I didn't want to take my eyes of Jesse, but I should have been more forceful about telling my kid to leave the doorway. I had a talk with said kid afterwards, saying that "only daddy can talk to strangers." Oh, and I decided from now on that I'll say to salesman, "Just a minute, let me go put something on."
