The Curious Case Of The Found Pants
Like most kids, I enjoyed my mystery series, with Encyclopedia Brown being at the top of the list. (It was in the ice cubes the whole time!)
Well, I enjoyed most mystery series. Nancy Drew was an exception. When my mom handed me my first Nancy Drew book, The Secret of the Old Clock, I remember looking at the cover art – which was of a girl kneeling next to a clock with a document next to it – and thinking, “There’s a will in the clock. Done.” I never read past page four, and I never picked up another Nancy Drew novel. Truthfully, I was a little insulted. (Insulted by the series, not my mom.)
I also liked to watch Alfred Hitchcock Presents on Nick at Nite, so I preferred my mysteries with unexpected twists – murder victims that became feed on the farm didn’t bother me at all.
And, thanks to my grandmother’s love of Murder, She Wrote, my favorite murder giveaway goes something like this:
“I can’t believe poor Mrs. Winters was shot to death.”
“I never said anything about Mrs. Winters being shot. How could you know that? Unless …”
[Insert slow clap.] “Well, I guess you’re onto me now, aren’t you?” Or, for the more sympathetic criminals, there were doe eyes and, “She was going to ruin me Jessica! Don’t you understand? She was going to ruin me!”
As an adult or child, I never get into Sherlock Holmes (unless he is being played by Robert Downey, Jr. – another story for another day). I want a chance to figure out a mystery, and if I have to know obscure 18th century ceramic patterns and cigar bands from India to solve the crime, I’m just not interested.
I will, however, watch most anything loosely-based on Sherlock Holmes – House (until they got rid of Cameron and ruined it for me), The Mentalist and Psych included. (Hugh Laurie, Simon Baker and James Roday may, or may not, have something to do with that.)
While I also like to play armchair detective when it comes to the news (“The killer is obviously a white male with Mommy issues”), I prefer not to go looking for mysteries in my own life. As a child, yes, I was all about lost money or old wills or treasure, but as an adult, I find the daily hunt for my missing keys to be enough of an extracurricular mental challenge.
This is only one of the many reasons I don’t like it when strange things occur around my house. These days, I have no need for secret admirers, long-lost relatives or neighbors trying to stuff rugs in the backs of their cars late at night. A quiet, peaceful home works just fine for me.
So, to whoever left their pants outside my door over the weekend – stop it! I don’t want to consider the possibilities of how your pants got there (ew), why you were pants-less on my property (more ew) or why you picked my house of all places, to gallivant. (The pants incident is still very jarring for me, so I’ve kind of run out of words for the whole thing. Hence, for you unfortunate reader, “gallivant.”)
As far as I’m concerned, clothes belong on people, and if anyone is going to leave clothes around my house, he or she is going to at least be someone I know.
Whoever you are, oh mysterious provider of pants, please find another stoop for your leftovers. This particular armchair detective has enough to worry about with her car keys and finding that tax form I tried to file last week.