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Are you looking for a new condition you can mention at a party to earn a small amount of pity and make you more interesting? It's not debilitating, but it is chronic. You already might be a sufferer, and there's only one way to find out: Order a pizza to be delivered.
Usually I pick it up, because the delivery guy might have six stops between the oven and you. It's the difference between hot and semi-quasi-hot. But it was a chilly night, and I felt lazy. After an hour, though, I was curious, and called the store.
I was met with a prerecorded message that touted the joys of working for the company, followed by a pitch for adding pop to my order. Never thought of that. You have pop? Really? I finally got a human being who probably was ringing up an order with one hand and making a pizza with the other and folding boxes with his feet, and I asked for a status on my order. He looked up my phone number and said the words I did not expect to hear:
"It was delivered, left outside your door."
What? No one knocked.
"The delivery person knocked and no one answered, so it was left outside the door. "
Define knock. If you mean he produced an ostrich feather wrapped in silk and brushed it against the door, that's not a knock, and even then the dog would have gone into full kill-the-mailman-mode. The dog barks if anyone gets close to the house. The dog barks if someone is looking at the house on Google Street View.
There's a doorbell, and it didn't ring. There's a big doorknocker that makes a sound like a nail gun firing a railroad spike into a gong, and I didn't hear it.
"Well," said the pizza store guy, "you should have better front-door awareness."
I wanted to snap, "Don't you tell me to hone my familiarity with the unfolding situation regarding my primary home portal," but I was hungry. I opened the door to find the pizzas on the stoop in the 17-degree weather, looking forlorn and abandoned. I expected them to be frostbitten. New meaning to "blue cheese."
The microwave brought them back to life. But then I realized: maybe he was right. Maybe I suffered from low front-door awareness syndrome, or LFDAS (pronounced "Lif-das").
Perhaps you are afflicted, as well. When was the last time you thought about your front door? I mean, really thought about it?
Modern Pharma no doubt could craft a drug that increased awareness of my front door, and run ads with happy retired people sitting at the kitchen table laughing or young folks in an immaculate bungalow playing with a dog. Voiceover: "Have you ever missed a pizza? Failed to notice the mail? Had a package stolen from the stoop by one of those miserable thieves who make you wish that you had set out leg traps on the steps? Portalexxtra may be for you. In clinical trials, eight out of 10 people reported heightened awareness of activity related to their front door.
"Do not take Portalexxtra if you are allergic to Portaleva. Side effects may include excessive glancing. Portalexxtra is not effective on side doors. If a persistent ringing sound occurs, there's probably someone at the door."
Or I could just make a note when I order online: Tip will be given in person. Pretty sure I'd hear that knock just fine.
