We solved our murder box mystery yesterday. Over the last couple of months, sifting through evidence, cracking codes, and reading crime reports and letters out loud, has become sort of a Saturday morning routine, like cartoons for grown-ups.
When I was younger, the relatively new field of forensic anthropology was fascinating to me. So much so that, for Christmas one year, my mother gave me a ticket to a seminar at the Smithsonian on the topic. Back then, I used to read gory murder mysteries with gusto, and I was equally captivated by anything to do with serial killers and other true crime.
But like cartoons, I kind of feel like the older I get, the less entertaining someone else's misfortune is. Oh, I still get sucked in by the odd Dateline or 48 Hours, but it's harder to shake the knowledge that real lives were shattered, and at least one was ended by the events that I'm sitting on my couch watching.
The murder box made it easy to stay detached. Clearly fictional, the setting was 85 years in the past; none of the principals were even alive. And it was fun.
But still. It's a little twisted, isn't it?
Life Lesson: "Vicarious living is only slightly less impossible than vicarious eating." ~Mason Cooley
When I was younger, the relatively new field of forensic anthropology was fascinating to me. So much so that, for Christmas one year, my mother gave me a ticket to a seminar at the Smithsonian on the topic. Back then, I used to read gory murder mysteries with gusto, and I was equally captivated by anything to do with serial killers and other true crime.
But like cartoons, I kind of feel like the older I get, the less entertaining someone else's misfortune is. Oh, I still get sucked in by the odd Dateline or 48 Hours, but it's harder to shake the knowledge that real lives were shattered, and at least one was ended by the events that I'm sitting on my couch watching.
The murder box made it easy to stay detached. Clearly fictional, the setting was 85 years in the past; none of the principals were even alive. And it was fun.
But still. It's a little twisted, isn't it?
Life Lesson: "Vicarious living is only slightly less impossible than vicarious eating." ~Mason Cooley
This is a masterful blending of the anecdote and life lesson. That murder box sounds like fun!
ReplyDeleteYour correlation "like cartoons for grown-ups" is very effective.
ReplyDelete