You’ve mysteriously disappeared and been reported missing. The detectives and crime scene investigators are inspecting your house, your car, your office, etc. What conclusions do they leap to that are totally wrong?
In an episode of CSI, they are processing an older man’s vehicle and when they turn on the ignition, rap music blasts out of the stereo. They deduce that the grandson was the last one to drive the vehicle.
I listen to an oldies rock station most of the time when I’m driving. For some reason, this station plays church sermons and church talk on Sunday mornings. So if the CSIs turned on my ignition on a Sunday morning, they might assume I was a devout Christian.
In one episode they gave a police officer or sheriff’s deputy absolute hell because the magazine in his service pistol was not full. What little experience I have with shooting tells me that lots of people leave out one round or more to reduce the chances of the gun jamming. But they ruled that out immediately. So there’s another thing they’d get wrong about me, if I had a pistol and kept it loaded.
They’d come in my house and see my cats’ food dishes, look for the cat, and eventually find her. But they wouldn’t figure out that I have a second cat who was outside somewhere.
Depending on how imaginative and how sexist they are, they might wonder why there’s so much military stuff around my house and no evidence of a man living there.
They would say my bedroom had been ransacked and all the valuables stolen. Yeah, it’s a mess in there sometimes when the rest of the house is tidy and I have no valuables.
Are you a mechanic? Because if my mechanic did that my car they wouldn’t be my mechanic anymore (EDIT: Even though that’s the kind of music I like).
As for the OP, I’ve thought about this a lot and I’m not sure there’s anything the cops would get wrong about me. I watch a lot of TV, play a lot of video games and read a lot of books. Throughout my entire house you’ll find piles of DVDs, video games and books. This would probably make them think I don’t have a busy social life, and they’d be pretty right.
They might think I’m vegetarian because my wife is so there’s rarely any meat in the house. The animal rights literature might throw them off too.
I think about this all the time when I’m putting something in a bizarre place, or doing something goofy. What would the CSI’s make of the fact that I returned from my holiday visit to my parents on December 8, and yet my suitcase is still not unpacked? Or the large garbage bag filled with clothing sitting in the middle of my bedroom with the word “ALMOST” printed in Sharpie on the side?
In the first episode of one of those series (it might have been CSI: Miami), they figured out that someone who jumped off a building couldn’t have committed suicide because they were still wearing their glasses, and suicides always remove their glasses. This little sequence was featured in numerous promos for the show, and drove me absolutely nuts. Not that I would ever commit suicide (and certainly not by jumping), but it would never even occur to me to remove my glasses. I never think about my glasses at all, and frequently forget to take them off before showering, going to bed, etc. If I were planning to commit suicide, my mind would be far to preoccupied to think about my glasses, and there would be no other clues (water spots, lying on a painful earpiece) to remind me to take them off.
If I was found unconscious but alive, they’d find that my right iris responds poorly to light. They might decide I’m brain damaged from some trauma. In truth, it’s been that way at least since childhood.
They would find his outfit I made him, along with mine.
For myself, by the amount of makeup and doodads I have around, they’d have to wonder if a second woman lived here, because I rarely use them. Also several sizes of clothes, different styles, some of which are not mine.
They may think I like birds since I have two. I don’t. Really. I don’t like having one bird much less two.
The birds were suppose to be for my husband at the time. I actually bought him one bird, a cockatiel, for his birthday. He wanted a large parrot but I thought it best to start out small. We then adopted two more from a friend that could no longer keep them.
When we seperated I left the birds with him. I visited the house often as I lived really close so I continued to use the washer and dryer with his permission of course.
I noticed the birds were not being taken care of. Their cages were filthy, their water was green and their food was dust left over from bird seed of long ago.
I warned him once. I even left a small clear glass with the nasty water in it and a small bowl with the dust and a note “How would you like to eat and drink this?”
Two weeks later the younger bird, the one I bought him was dead. I took the remaining two and have had them ever since.
I really don’t know what CSIs would make of my work space. I write on walls. Literally. And given the work that I do, they’d probably think I was a dangerous psychopath. Hell, half the time, I scare the living shit out of myself when I read the shit I write up there…
If they read the emails on my computer, then things might start to make more sense. Of course, they could also think I was some weird celebrity stalker right now. With the strike, my mailbox is rather… odd.
The books I have around are also… varied, shall we say? At any given time, on my desk, there’s stuff about forensics, the navy, military aircraft, ballistics, guns, explosives, game theory, abnormal psychology, screenwriting guidelines (the only saving grace, I bet), pharmaceutical company guides, chemistry… then a bunch of stuff related to medieval wales, the mabinogion and other such goodies (I’m working on an opera).
Along with the notes on the walls, they’d probably think I was some kind of escaped mental patient…
I agree with you about the glasses.
The first part of your post reminds me of tangential thoughts I’ve had about being in a car accident and the cops finding the really odd assortment of things I have in my car. Like an empty fish tank, a birthday cake, half a croquet set, etc.
Sometimes on the show they really get unimaginative. If the victim has a screwdriver in the bedroom, it must be a clue, because screwdrivers don’t belong in the bedroom. Heck, I have stuff sitting around for years at a time. I have two screwdrivers in my bedroom right now. I have a kite on my office floor. I have a bookbag full of study materials from a class I took nine months ago sitting on a chair, undisturbed.
They’d probably think two people live here, since I have two bedrooms and both beds get used(but not often made up). They also might think I haven’t been home in days, because I forget to take the mail out of the mailbox, sometimes for 4 or 5 days at a time.
:eek: There are even pictures of him at his workbench if you check the other albums!
Ditto the comments about items out of place, especially in the bedroom. We also have 5 laptops around the house currently, for two people, and the CSI people might think we were involved in some kind of computer-related criminal activity. In reality, two were recently replaced but we just haven’t gotten rid of them (both were XP, the replacements were Vista, and at least in my case I can’t play some of my old games on Vista), one each are used by my husband and I, and the last one is used as a printer/scanner server.
If they snooped on my computer long enough, they’d get the idea that I’m some kind of pervert because of all the porn … oh, wait, no, they’d be right about that part. Never mind.
If I weren’t home when they arrived, they’d think I hadn’t been there for months, because I always forget to turn my calendar leaves over until I forget someone’s birthday.
