I have a podcast problem.  I often spend hours each week with my headphones on, tuning out the world, immersed in a podcast.  And, if I’m honest, Crime Junkie was my gateway drug.  At a time when I was drowning in the non-stop backlog of dishes and laundry and meal prep and cleaning that tends to accompany a family with 4 kids, 2 dogs and an equally overwhelmed spouse, Crime Junkie saved me.  I could put on my headphones and be transported by Ashley Flowers & Brit into a crime mystery and suddenly the chores and chaos (and even jogs with the dog) became tolerable.  Enjoyable actually.  So enjoyable, in fact, that I actually had to start setting boundaries for myself or it was possible that the entirety of my “family time” at home could have been served with headphones on and attention diverted from my actual family.

And as I thought about what attracted me to these crime mysteries, I remembered my own early Crime Junkie days… growing up as a kid in a small town and trying to solve the mysteries of the neighbourhood (or really, trying to create or make up mysteries so I could solve them with my friends).  These were the days of Encyclopedia Brown – the smartest kid detective on TV, and I wanted to be him.  I also wanted to have a tree house and come up with clever “gotcha” moments… like the time he correctly identified that the “antique” sword was counterfeit and was not a true World War 1 relic, by pointing out that if it were genuinely from World War 1, there would have been no reason to use the “1” since the existence of a World War 2 would have been exclusively in the future.

Damn.  Mic drop.

And so my neighbourhood pals would put up flyers on the light posts around our little city block offering our detective services.  We’d try to sniff out mysteries and apply our super sleuth skills… but there just wasn’t really anything strange going on.  Ever.  I mean the most exciting thing on our block were some backyard neighbours who had 2 adult children with special needs.  Randy – the louder, and more social of the boys, would frequently whistle at the girls in the neighborhood, but he was generally a friendly, happy man.  He loved sports and could often be found watching whatever little league baseball game was happening at the nearby city park.  Somehow his parents felt it would be better if he and his brother played baseball without an actual ball – and so most days in the summer you could hear them tossing and catching an imaginary baseball back and forth.

Entertaining?  Yes.  A solid mystery for my kid detective crew to solve?  No.  But we’d keep our eyes open and keep hunting for clues, snooping in cupboards and old boxes in the basement or utility cabinets in the garage for something interesting.  My mom stayed home with us and always tried to help find us entertaining art projects or activities – but no mysteries.  My dad was a pharmacist – a man who had a very predictable schedule and routine.  He was quiet, calm and reliable.  You might even say, a bit boring – at least to a wanna-be kid detective.

Then came the day when my mystery hunting got me intro trouble… I stumbled on my dad’s stash of Playboy magazines, hidden in an obscure drawer in the rarely-used, guest powder room near the backdoor.  At first I was horrified – but also intrigued.  Like a train-wreck that you can’t look away from – I just kept flipping through the magazines.  And, to cope with my unexpected discovery, I also had to relay this news to my best friend, Kara.  As you can imagine, news like this among small-down kids did not stay tight.  And apparently Kara told her sister, Kelly, who was friends with my sister, Mel… I can’t honestly say exactly how far and wide the news of the Playboy stash spread.

Now, the other significant part about this summer of kid detectives and the Playboy stash, was that there was a new family in town.  They moved in just on the opposite side of our nearby park and had 2 daughters – the same age as me and my younger sister, Mel.  And this family was SUPER cool… partially because they were the new shiny penny of potential friends in a shallow pool of small-town kids – but also, because they were rumored to be “rich.”  They owned the best house in town  – AND the daughters were gorgeous.  I wanted to be friends with the eldest, Liv, so badly.

Luckily, I had an “in.”  We were on the same summer softball league together and it felt like my summer dreams were finally coming true.  We started to hang out – and, eager to make friends in a new city, Liv had invited me over to her house for dinner one evening.

So here I am – eating dinner with her beautiful family, in their beautiful home, toward the end of summer.  I feel like I finally hit the jackpot – I’m friends with the cool, rich, beautiful new girl.  I can almost feel my small-town social status climbing – and just in time for the new school year.  I’m basking in my newfound status, when her younger sister, Gracie, asks me, in front of everyone seated at the dining room table, politely (and quietly) eating their food – if, in fact – my dad actually had Playboy magazines with naked girls hidden in the bathroom at our house?

It was as if the whole family had paused for a major announcement of accomplishment… and once Gracie had unleashed her question, there was no comfortable or polite way to move past it.  EVERYONE at that table had heard – including her parents, and her tiny brother – as well as my new bestie, Liv.  I. Was. Mortified. 

I tried to deny any awareness of the Playboy magazines, but that just wound Gracie up even more – and she couldn’t wait to unleash the juicy details about how she heard about it, and what was in them.  Apparently, Mel and her friend gang (after hearing about this discovery through the neighbourhood news circuit) had been quick to snoop in the guest bathroom to verify the existence of the material for themselves…  In any case, my denials got me nowhere.  I had been called out as a member of the family with the Playboys hiding in the bathroom.

Luckily, Liv’s mom recovered quicker than the rest of us.  She shut down the discussion, informing Gracie that this really wasn’t appropriate dinner-table conversation.  Gracie, that little stinker, kept shooting me knowing glances and winks throughout the rest of our dinner together… but for the most part, things moved on. 

Through the coming years, I grew close with Liv and her family.  I also realized that owning a few Playboys wasn’t at all outrageous – as it had initially seemed to my 8-year-old self and my gang of small-town friends.  But the sheer, raw embarrassment of that first family dinner with Liv and her parents is something I’ll never forget.  I have since realized there might be some reasons why it’s better not to snoop – and that once you know something, you can never unknow it.  I’ve left my super-sleuthing and detective aspirations in the past – but I’ll always love listening to a bit of true crime drama as relayed by Ashley Flowers and the crew from Audio Chuck… stories where solid detective work actually leads to productive results and not just sheer embarrassment.