Shadow & Substance

The Secret of the Mystery

Here’s my second-most easily exploitable secret: Put your request in the form of a mystery that needs solving and I’ll do just about anything. I need to solve mysteries. Einstein Anderson, Encyclopedia Brown, DuckTales and Batman messed me up as a kid. I had the whole junior private eye shebang: rear-view glasses, magnifying glass (classic Sherlock Holmes), handcuffs, fingerprint kit, jaded detachment, memories I couldn’t forget no matter how much I wanted to.

Despite early career setbacks such as “The Case of What Mommy and Daddy are Doing in There and Why Does it Sound Painful?” and the entanglement of complex clues and suspects that was “The Case of Does God Exist?” and the ensuing follow-up cases it spawned, I remained enamored of the mystery-solving role. 

Even as an adult, I’m irrationally compelled to solve mysteries whenever they pop up around me. I’ll go out of my way to step in a mystery. Sometimes I overhear mundane things and mentally turn them into a mystery, which of course means I have to get involved. Here are some common phrases that trigger my mystery-solving impulse:

• “Where did I put my phone?”
• “Who took my beer?”
• “Why hasn’t she called? It’s been two weeks! I thought we had a good time. Am I that unattractive?”
• “What is that smell, where is it coming from, and how can we stop it?”
• “Are you even listening to me? Sometimes I wonder whether you ever listen to me.”
• “How old are these potatoes? This one looks a little like a fetus.”
• “Where did you go in your head? What’s more important than what I’m saying to you?”
• “Who put the cookie in the cookie jar?”
• “Who murdered my best friend?”
• “I swear to god — you’re daydreaming about that Sam Spade bullshit again, aren’t you? Are you that obsessed? Why can’t you solve the mystery of why I’m so boring to you that you have to tune me out, like you’re some kind of…” (My memory usually stops around here)
• “I can’t tell if my hamster is a boy or a girl. I’m pretty sure it should be obvious.”
• “Instant oatmeal—where does it come from?”

I sometimes think it would be wonderful to solve real cases, but that’s just a pipe dream. The private dick game is nothing like the movies and books. It’s not even like Bored to Death—although I like to believe I’m roughly Jason Schwartzman’s character but younger. No, PI work sounds like a lot of paperwork, doing boring cases, going through the rigmarole. Actually, it sounds like doing homework.

For now, I’m content without extra homework.

Props to Anthony Clark for the title of this post. I stole it from His Nedroid Picture Diary book Beartato and the Secret of the Mystery because I liked it so much.