We had a detective birthday party for our oldest one year. One of my favorite parties. It took lots of planning. I had saved every piece of junk mail and envelope from regular mail. I had saved every empty box from cereal and school snacks. The kids were in teams with a certain colour. They had three steps to complete the tasks to win. I can’t remember the first task, something to do with words and a map, I think. When they solved that part they had to go into room number one and search through the boxes to find their colour clue and solve it. Once that was complete they had to go through giant bag of junk mail to find and solve the final clue. Kid parties were my thing. I liked to have enough stuff to keep them entertained until pick up. This party was perfect and I did not have to lead it.
Since I spent a huge chunk of my preteens watching and playing detailed games of Charlie’s Angels, detective work was one of my life goals, after forest ranger. Didn’t pan out like many of my childhood whims, however it gave me a good set of skills that helped me raise kids. Good cop, bad cop, interrogation, divide and conquer, sequence of events, who ate the cereal, who spilled the milk, who ate all of their siblings advent chocolates!
Digital age messes with these skills now. I am not real tech savvy. Much better than the grade ten student that walked out of Data Processing and swore off all technology. So the technical people have a one up. For some, they may also have a deficit. If they received a cursive letter with a map attached giving grid coordinates to a pay phone telling them to make a call when the giant analog clock on the corner said 2:18, I’m not sure how many sleuths it would take. I know, a bit far fetched. I’m sure the criminals would leave a phone with coordinates already in Google maps and a countdown timer built in. All jokes aside, I sure hope these older ways don’t become obsolete…
Momma Wouldn't Say 