Yesterday, I hosted a rummage sale in my yard. I put out a few things from my garage, but mostly it was guy stuff: tools and power tools and a couple of banjos. There's not a lot of traffic on my street, so really, most of the morning we sat on the porch and played Crack the Case. Eventually, a neighbor kid (different from capital-N Neighbor Kid but about his age) came over, drawn by the electric guitar, the amp, the foot pedals and microphones. He was in heaven, and stayed forever just drooling. Neighbor Kid, the original, came over then with his mouse on his shoulder and he and I chatted. He told me he knew the other kid, but clearly, they didn't run in the same circles. Other kid was confident and chill and wearing a Metallica t-shirt. They weren't friends.
I tried to hide out for a while, but eventually I gave up and went outside, case in hand: a man in black shoots a man in gray on a train. Why? I was pretty happy for a while, Neighbor Kid and other kid making crazy guesses and the four of us having a good time together. But Neighbor Kid couldn't stop himself. Soon it was: Was the killer a killer? Was the killer on a train? Was the killer wearing black? I just wanted to tell him to be cool. He climbed my maple tree instead.
Then other kid read a case for us, and it was a humdinger. We figured out the gossip columnist was killed by acid in the hot tub, but we needed to determine who killed her and why. Other kid told us that this person had an occupation that didn't really exist anymore. So we're going through every job that might have been replaced by computers: typist, VCR repair person, milk man? Eventually, he said the person worked on a roof. Antenna guy? And then, aha, I said: chimney sweep. And he said, yes, a chimnist.
I'd never heard the term chimnist, but I went with it. Was the chimnist having an affair with the movie star, did the chimnist owe somebody money? Was the killer Mary Poppins?
In the end, we gave up and he let us see the card. The killer was a chemist (and had access to acid). Crack the Case is hard with people who can't read.
I have heard that cleaning places will send a camera up your chimney and take digital video these days, so I'll give him credit for the obsolete comment, even if it led us very far astray. But really, all of this is just to say maybe Neighbor Kid doesn't need the cool kid to like him. Neighbor Kid's knowledge is pretty esoteric (a baby mouse is called a "pinky"), but at least I trust him when he tells me something.
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