What would you have done? NYE and random young stranger
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
I grew up in the suburbs in the Midwest and am very trusting, and have a young daughter so I’m always watching out for HS/college aged girls. I’m also paranoid and do not answer the doorbell after dark if it’s someone I don’t know. We don’t have a Ring doorbell but can easily see anyone at the front door.
DH grew up in a big city but has ADHD and is just a general idiot when it comes to common sense. He is terrible at thinking on the fly. Our doorbell rang at 10 pm and DH answered it because I was upstairs. It was a young girl who was between 17-20. We live in a city neighborhood but on a very quiet dead end that’s only a cut-through for neighborhood kids, but I didn’t know her. The girl asked if she could use our bathroom. DH was in the process of letting her inside (down to tell her which direction the bathroom was in) m when I came down and was like, I’m sorry, but I’m not ok with this and you need to leave. I was nice but firm and she was polite in return. We are blocks away from encampments and large transit stops and in an area with a lot of recent forced entry breakins. We also have a nice stand of bushes and trees at the end of the block that would afford a lot of privacy should someone need an emergency pit stop. Maybe she was an innocent girl who needed a bathroom? Maybe she was looking for prescription drugs, money or jewelery (all of which were in or en route to the bathroom!)? Maybe she had accomplices who were going to come in while my DH stood like a moron with the door wide open? Anyway, I did the right thing, right? The only time I remember strangers asking to use a bathroom is when I was in middle school and we were playing softball on a remote field backing into a subdivision with zero trees to hide behind. My teammates rang a doorbell to ask a family to use their bathroom. And this was in the 1980s in Ohio. |
Anonymous
| Overreacted. Definitely. |
Anonymous
|
I think you probably followed your gut instinct in this and it was probably the right call.
But I also think it’s nagging at you because maybe you wished you had asked if she was okay or was in some sort of trouble and needed help. It’s definitely a strange situation, OP. |
Anonymous
| I would have done the same as you OP. |
Anonymous
| I think you did the right thing. Highly suspect for someone to need to use your bathroom. |
Anonymous
| No public restrooms. Sorry. |
Anonymous
|
I don't understand what dire scenario you were worried about. She wasn't going to steal something in front of you. And you wouldn't expect to find prescription drugs in a powder room, which is presumably what she would have been taken to. If others were wrong to force their way into a house with awake occupants, then a locked door wouldn't have done much to stop them. And besides, on NYE, there would have been plenty of unoccupied homes that would have been far better targets.
The most pessimistic scenario I can think of is that she was checking if anyone was home. But there are better ways to do that that would raise less suspicion. A more plausible, but probably still unlikely, scenario is that the poor girl needed help, and was just using the bathroom question to get in the door. |
Anonymous
| 100% in the right. |
Anonymous
| You did the right thing. Your husband is dense lol! |
Anonymous
I’m not worried about if she was okay or not, actually- that’s the weird part. She did reek of alcohol but didn’t seem drunk and she had a phone and a wallet and was dressed in a regular casual NYE outfit m. Her story was so weird, though. She was telling my DH that she was en route from X neighborhood but getting an Uber in our neighborhood Y because a friend told her to wait on our street to get one (we are not a good place to get a ride) to go to z neighborhood. Anyway, I told my DH that from now on he has to follow my rules for when I’m the only adult home, which is that I only open the door to people I recognize, I don’t come to the door during the day for strangers, and at night I speak to strangers through the door with my phone in my hand. If it were a legit emergency and she was in danger of something worse than wetting herself, she could have told us through the door, dialed 911, or gone to any of the 7 other houses on the block that are also lit up but are level with the sidewalk or any of the open restaurants 1 block away. We’re 15 steps up from the street which makes it extra weird. I’m so frustrated with my DH’s poor judgement. He was just standing with the door wide open at the door and had already let a complete stand inside the house on the other side of him next to two sets of car keys, two wallets, etc. |
Anonymous
| You are right and your DH is an idiot. |
Anonymous
| I can virtually guarantee she wasn't an innocent girl walking by needing a bathroom. Probably just looking for medicine cabinet drugs, but you can't be too careful. |
Anonymous
|
As the mom of. 17 year old girl I am really worried for this girl that she is put on the street drunk.
I’m not saying you did the wrong thing —the situation is really weird. What teen girl would go into a stranger’s house at night by themselves? I know a teen that did that growing up and he ended up murdered. I’m not an all sure what I would have done. |
Anonymous
Boy you’re naive |
Anonymous
| I grew up in NYC, have daughters and nobody in three generations of my family would have ever opened the door to this girl. |