Mireille the Investigator

I couldn’t find my toothbrush this morning. That may not sound that strange, but I have one of those big Sonicare toothbrushes that would seem very difficult to lose. In fact, where my toothbrush was supposed to be, Jenny’s had taken its place, a similar Sonicare but different color.

I had no idea where it could be. Initially I blamed Jenny for hiding it on me. She came home angry last night for reasons unknown, and was argumentative. Since I had brushed my teeth before she had gotten home, I immediately blamed her for hiding my toothbrush out of spite. However, she explained that she did not hide it, and I eventually believed her sincerity.

My next obvious culprit was Ethan. He typically showers at night. Last night he had showered around 10:30, after I had brushed my teeth. I must have dozed off at some point, but awoke around 11:00 to find him in my bathroom using Jenny’s hair drier. His apparently was glowing and shot a spark off in a random direction, so he no longer felt safe using it. Fair. It did seem odd to me that Ethan would have stolen my toothbrush, but my brain tried to reason it through. Maybe he was feeling bouyed by a fun evening at his school play where his new lady interest was performing as a stage hand. Who knows - but he was sleeping, and I couldn’t ask him, so I would keep looking.

My last resort option was the one that had proven so many times to have taken and hidden something of mine. My adorable daughter. And as luck would have it, she was up, and interested in what was going on. She had seen Jenny and I looking through trash cans and clothes hampers. So I asked her, fully expecting that she most likely did it, “Sweetie, do you know where my toothbrush is?”

“Yes,” she told me. “Downstairs, then take a left, then take another left, then take a right, and that’s where it is.” Hmm… Didn’t seem legit, but she does like to give directions, and she does think she knows her left from her right. So I asked her to show me. She took me by the hand and led me downstairs, through the kitchen, down towards Ethan’s bathroom, where I found…

Nothing. There was no sign of the toothbrush. She was just up for the specatacle.

Seeing my disappointment, Mireille looked at me and said, “Hmm, I think so we have a mystery to solve.”

OK, now I’m a little weirded out. I have never heard her say that before, but she was genuinely interested, and seemed to be ready to solve the mystery. To my surprise, she went to the desk and got out a hand sized paper notebook and a pencil. She then followed me into the kitchen and said to me, “Dad, when was the last time you saw the missing toothbrush?” Seriously, I think sometimes when I quote my children I artificially make them sound older than they normally do, and paraphrase them, but this is literally what she asked me.

I explained to her, “I saw it last night when I brushed my teeth, in my bathroom.” She looked pensively at her notebook and jotted down some notes. She then proceeded to ask me some more questions, but I was reeling from the prior two statements and cannot remember what she asked me. Eventually she tore off a piece of note paper and handed it to me - it was full of gibberish pencil markings. She asked me to print my name, then took it and apparently admitted it into evidence.

After a little more searching, I remembered trying to get Quinton to go to bed while I was brushing my teeth. A quick check of his room yielded the lost item almost immediately, sitting inocuously on his dresser. Though I suspected nearly every single one of my family members, the guilty party, in the end, was none other than myself…