A terrible crime is committed in your area. After some false starts, the cops finally nab a suspect: you! They haul you in for questioning. “Okay, punk,” they say; “Where were you on the night of Thursday, June 9th, between 8 and 10pm?”
Well? Where were you? Two weeks after the fact, can you recount what you did that night, who you did it with, and the events leading up to it? Do you have any witnesses who can vouch for you? What’s your alibi?
How about one week ago? Can you vouch for what you were doing during those hours on Thursday, June 16th?
Me? I’ve got no clue what I was doing. I was probably either at work, on my way home, or watching TV, but I really don’t know. I’ll be sent up the river for sure!
Depends. I have a shit memory and would never actually recall where I was based solely on a date (unless an obvious holiday). But I tend to keep a regular schedule, and put any notable plans in my iCal so in most cases I could figure it out, in some cases just by the day of the week. And of course I could nail it down further based on my Facebook updates / browser histories.
In that case, I usually am at my grandmas house on Thursday evenings, and I know I was there because last week we watched Letters To Juliet and the week before Black Swan.
Without checking my calendar, searching for posts on boards I frequent and/or logs of any online games I happen to currently be playing I couldn’t tell you what I did yesterday let alone 7 - 14 days ago. That’s always been one thing that I scoff at in cop shows.
“Oh yes officer I was at the store at that time and I can pull the receipt out of my wallet in 3 seconds flat” Pfft.
I’ve often wondered this. I would generally have no idea, especially if they (the police) were trying to pin me down about where I’d been on some random date a year ago.
Since I use my debit card for pretty much everything it can tell me a lot of places and times. If I’m not at home for the night I’m probably somewhere spending money one way or another.
June 9th? Can I check my work calendar? That wasn’t a week I had the next day off (we close every other Friday), so I was probably at home futzing around on the internet and maybe taking a measured one-mile walk around the neighborhood half an hour after dinner.
My son lives with me. Can I ask him? Hey Son? What night was Green Lantern released? So it wasn’t the 9th? What about the 9th, did we go to the gym that night? Or shopping? I know it wasn’t the day I went to the gym without you, that was two days ago. Could we have gone out to eat?
What did you say? Oh, right, that was the night before the off-schedule D&D game. I forgot to write down the exp and had to get it from you later. Pity it isn’t the 10th we’re talking about or I’d have actual non-relatives to vouch for where I was.
Sorry. I guess you’ll have to check the gym to see if I was there. They have a fingerprint sign-in. And you could check my debit card to see if it was used, but sometimes the boy or the girl uses it. That’s usually during the day at the beginning of the week, though. Maybe you can check my computer, but I don’t know how to do that.
You can check it without taking it away, can’t you? Can’t . . .? . . . Do you have a loaner?
It’s pretty easy for me…I was home, probably knitting and watching TV with the family or possibly playing a board game. We don’t do much on Thursday nights.
I totally know where I was both nights: sitting in my chair, raiding with my WoW raid group. At least 9 other people can vouch for this, and I’m sure if law enforcement wanted to subpoena Blizzard’s records, they could see that my toon was logged in from my normal IP address during those times.
I was home, posting on a little advice group I run. The date/time stamps on the posts will prove it. I don’t remember where I read this, but apparently it’s MORE suspicious when a person has perfect recall of what they did on a certain date. Most people are like what we’re saying here. “I don’t have a clue”. Unless they did something special such as go out to dinner with friends, or shopping or some such.
