Law and Disorder

You’re going to spend a lot of time investigating the criminal activities of your children. Crimes such as The Peanut Butter and Barbie Sandwich Affair and the string of compact disc thefts from late 2003 still haunt our tiny house. And residents still whisper and lower their eyes when speaking about Crayongate. Yes, life with young children will often present you with mysteries which are difficult to solve for a variety of reasons, including uncooperative witnesses (the kids), inept law enforcement (the dog), and corrupt judicial officials (that would be me – I’ve been known to sink pretty low to get results. The Snickers Bar bribery scandal comes to mind).

My most recent investigation involved the dining room table, something sharp and one of the children’s names. I was setting the plates around the table – a job normally reserved for the children, but for some reason I was doing it myself – when I noticed one of the children’s name was carved into the table in letters about half in inch high. A rookie investigator would have been tempted to immediately call the usual suspects into the room and immediately begin interrogating until he had answers. But I have been at this game too long to dive into interrogations without a little preparation. Plus, I had a Thai coconut squash soup on the stove and it needed to be stirred or else it would get all lumpy on the bottom and nobody wants that. Not to mention the cheddar crisps I had toasting in the oven. No, I would need to prepare myself for what was sure to be a test of cunning and intelligence. Would I be able to outwit a three year old and her four brothers and sisters? Only time would tell.

The first thing I did was set a plate over the evidence. That way anyone who may want to glance over at their handy-work would spend a little more time gawking around as they tried to find the carving. Criminals almost always return to the scene of the crime – they like to rub our noses in it. Also, it was dinner time, so the criminal was forced to return to the scene of the crime, but never mind that. As the children ate dinner, they all looked fairly shifty to me – probably because they had all been up to something or other, but this was the only crime I had proof had taken place. Since no one spent and inordinate amount of time trying to look at the table, I moved on to the second phase of the investigation: casually buttering them up.

Not, you know, putting butter on them – I can see why, since this was at the dinner table, you might be confused by the term “buttering up,” but it just means to build up their confidence and lower their defenses. We haven’t had to actually apply dairy products to a child since the Skunk Taunting Milk Bath of 2001.

“So, how was everyone’s day,” I asked. I watched carefully to see who looked away. All of them did. Then they ignored me completely – this didn’t surprise me, as they were merely following Kid Law, which clearly states that unless an adult as you, specifically, a very specific question about your day, you must not answer that question. Group questions were right out. If I ask a specific kid, “How was your day?” I can expect that he will answer, “Fine.” He’ll give that answer even if his school day was marred by a terrorist in the cafeteria. Had there actually been a terrorist attack on the school, I would only be able to get that information from him by asking very detailed, very specific questions.

“How was school?”

“Fine.”

“Did you do anything fun? Did you learn anything?”

“I guess.”

“Did anything exciting happen today?”

“No.”

“Did anyone try to detonate a dirty bomb during lunch?”

“Yes.”


I move on to asking each child specific questions, but I stay away from tipping my hand too early. I am tempted to ask Achilles when was the last time he had seen his pocket knife, just to see the reaction of the table, but I bite my tongue – seriously, I bit my tongue eating a piece of pecan pie we had for dessert and my investigation stalled.

While we were clearing the table, I had my accomplice, Junior Detective Stacy, pretend to find the carving. I then called all the children into the room and swung my investigation into high gear. I put them at the end of the table like a police line-up and I launched into my speech.

“Someone has been playing games. Someone has been destructive. Someone has decided the rules just don’t apply.”

Five blank faces.

“I want you all to take a look at the table – right there at the end. What do you see?”

Five blank faces.

“Well, what do you see?”

“Wood,” says Suspect One.

“The table,” says Suspect Two.

“A wooden table,” says Suspect Three.

Suspect Four has forgotten the question.

“I wanna tell you sumpthin,” says Suspect Five. I know from experience that what Suspect Five, being three years old, wants to tell me is, “I love you,” because that is what she always says when she senses tension. I don’t suck for her tricks.

“Does anyone notice the name carved into the table?”

Five blank faces.

I change the question. “There is a name carved into the table – whose name is it?”

“I wanna tell you sumpthin,” says Suspect Five.

“It says, ‘Queen Mab,’” says Suspect Two.

“That’s true, it does,” says Suspect Four.

“I see wood,” says Suspect Three.

“That’s not how I spell my name,” says Suspect One.

And it was true. Despite the fact the Queen Mab’s name was the one carved into the table, I had already pretty much decided she was probably not the culprit, given that her sixth grade education would almost have certainly allowed her to spell Queen Mab without using a K. Suspects Two, Three and Four all turned to look at Suspect Five, as if I might buy the fact that the three year old had carved the name in the table. I wasn’t ready to totally eliminate anyone as a suspect just yet, so but I decided the focus of my attention should probably go elsewhere.

“You know what I think,” I asked Two, Three and Four? “I think it was one of you three.”

“It could have been one of use,” said Two, “But have you considered the fact that it may have been Queen Mab trying to get one of us in trouble?” Two is the junior lawyer in the family and often tries to argue himself out of trouble based on semantic technicalities – his win to loss ratio is atrocious, but he tries hard. In this case, he didn’t think this was an absurd idea at all. Truth be told, I had briefly considered this scenario already, but Suspect One didn’t fit that profile. If she had an axe to grind with one of the other children, she would hit them with it – that’s her profile. Suspect Two sensed I wasn’t believing this, so he shut up. A wise move.

Suspect Two does, in fact, own a pocket knife, so he was pretty high on the list, until I remembered that he had been at a friend’s house all afternoon, which was the time frame forensics had given me for when this crime took place. That left only Suspect Three and Suspect Four. They both looked guilty to me, so I just stared and waited.

“Can I speak to my lawyer?” Three asked.

“Mom is working on the dishes,” I replied. “If you cooperate I can make sure things go smoothly
for you on the upcoming Hidden Candy Bar Wrappers In The Bedroom Case.”

Suspect Three mulled this over for a moment, looked up at the ceiling, down at her shoes and said, “I ain’t no rat.”

Which, actually, she was, since she was pretty clearly indicating that it wasn’t her, which only left one suspect – Number Four. I pulled the hanging dining room light over the top of Number Four’s head.

“We can do this the easy way, or the hard way,” I told him.

In retrospect, I probably should have cuffed him immediately, because I left the room to refill my coffee mug and he fled through an open window. After a short bicycle chase which ended in a fiery crash on a neighbor’s lawn and a foot race across the park, I once again had the suspect in custody. You can catch the whole thing on COPS this Saturday night.