Day 2

When one goes about telling a mystery story, either through the written word or on screen, the key element is information. The writer or originator of the story must provide all of the clues necessary in order to solve the mystery, though the best storytellers make the details small and seemingly insignificant, yet very essential to the outcome.

These details are combined with timing, in which the most essential essentials are revealed at the height of the climax, often in a large amount as the mystery is beginning to become unraveled. Sometimes a secret or two is revealed, though these too have their clues scattered behind them like scrumptious breadcombs leading the way.

I am a mystery lover. As a child I dabbled in Encyclopedia Brown and a little bit of Agatha Christy; however, these days I indulge (though this is a rather generous term) with evening crime dramas: CSI Miami, NCIS, or Burn Notice. They are not quite the truest of mystery stories and often their clue crumbs are crummy.

But I love the pursuit, the thrive of the chase. I love investigating and hunting out how details are often the beginning of deep truths. This is probably one of my idyosyncrecies--when I do something odd I wonder how it would be analyzed by a crime lab. If, for instance, someone were to examine my friend Shelly's shower nozzle they would discover a brown elastic hairband. It is not a style that Shelly wears and it has been there for five months, placing its arrival in July, a time when Shelly was in the country of Lebanon. Who could have installed this hairband around the nozzle in order to hold up the shower rack? Perhaps flakes from my skin or even a trapped piece of my hair left a trace on the fibers?

If I were to write my final paper on my own personal family for my family therapy course in the form of a mystery, the last page would include a detail that came at almost the last moment. It was a secret that was right under my nose and, while I had all the other data pointing to this truth, it was not until the secret was revealed that I found my hypothesis confirmed. A lady never reveals her secrets so I won't provide details; however, it brings great clarity to the workings of my immediate family.

The proud part of me wants to pat myself on the back for solving the case before evidence was conclusive. But mostly I'm sad. Sad that families have secrets and sad that it took this course for me to start getting to know my family better.

Mysteries have their places, but I prefer mine to be fictional.