It Was A Simplier Time

The other day I was down in my basement when I came across a large box of books I read when I was a kid. Near the top was an Encyclopedia Brown book which had several short mysteries in one book. As you do when you find an old book I flipped through it. I landed on one case that, for some reason, I not only remembered reading but also could recall most of the details in the story. The basic premise was this: there was a store robbery in the morning and the police had a suspect in mind. They went to his house and brought the child detective along (as, clearly, the police often do in real life). They found the suspect outside his house, babysitting his nephew who was playing on the hood of the suspect's car. The suspect claimed he couldn't have robbed the store because he had been working out of town, had to drive all morning just to get home and had arrived there only 15 minutes ago. This is where Encyclopedia Brown stepped up and pointed out that if he really had been driving all morning, as the suspect claimed, then the hood of his car would be far too hot for a baby to be playing on (why no one thought to point out that a baby shouldn't be playing on the hood of a car is another point for another day). GOT HIM! Confronted with this mountain of forensic evidence, the suspect confessed. Chalk up another victory for Encyclopedia Brown.

As I put the book back down I had one thought: there is no way that holds up in court. Clearly, when we were growing up the burden of proof was much lower. Seriously, that's not even worth being called circumstantial evidence. You couldn't even call that hearsay. I need more than the old "The hood of his car should have been hot" evidence, Mr. Brown. Any good public defender has this case thrown out in a minute and probably brings a lawsuit against the city for harassment. I recently read a story that, due to the popularity of evidence-heavy shows like CSI, prosecutors were having a much harder time getting juries to take a leap of faith - these days they want absolute proof and anything less than DNA evidence isn't good enough. I just wonder if this has started to seep into kid's mystery books like Encyclopedia Brown. I'll be interested to see how Encyclopedia Brown has evolved once my nieces are old enough to start reading his books (I certainly won't be reading them before that, because there is something creepy about a grown man in the children's reading section). You have to figure the author has adapted to the times or they would have taken him out of circulation. Does Encyclopedia now have his own lab? What about one of those lights that can detect blood? Can he do a ballistics test if the case calls for one? If Encyclopedia Brown doesn't get with the times, those damn kids over at Mystery Hunters are going to blow him out of the water.

-Yesterday, after shopping at Target I went into the supermarket next door, where all I wanted was a cold drink. Once again my scavenger-hunt skills were on display as I quickly found the drinks near the front of the store and went to the self-checkout to try and get in and out. I scanned the one drink and it was at this point the screen told me to place the item on the belt. Seeing as how it was a soda I was hesitant to do that because it would go rolling down the belt, get shaken and explode when I opened it two minutes into the future. I tried placing it on the belt while holding onto it and thus not allowing it to go anywhere hoping that would be good enough to appease whatever sensors were under the belt, but it wasn't. Again, the screen told me to place the item on the belt. I tried skipping the conveyor belt completely and just placed the soda at the end of the line, thinking that maybe there was a sensor down there that would know I was being compliant. But again, no dice. At this point the screen told to wait for assistance and the light over the register started blinking. Oh, good, attention. My favorite thing. Some twelve year-old came over and I mumbled that I was just trying to keep my soda from being shaken up. Sighing at my stupidity the kid had me scan it again and then showed me the answer to my conundrum, which was to simply walk the soda down the conveyor belt. I guess that makes sense. Still, nothing brings down an ego quite like a teenager showing you how technology works. To think, I used to be tech-savvy.