Agatha Christie was born on this day in 1890. She is probably the best-known mystery writer of all-time, famous her elaborate murder plots. That inspired me to pull out this old Father Knows Nothing column. It didn't quite make the final cut for my Father Knows Nothing book, but I thought you might still get a kick out of it...
I really try my best to keep the house
from becoming living-in-squalor-y, but if a team of forensic scientists ever came
to my house with swabs, they would find a thousand blood samples. Right now
there’s a pool of dried blood on my front steps that I can’t wash away. We’ve
got blood stains on nearly every sheet and pillowcase in the house. Blood
stains on shirts and pants. Blood stains on gloves (paging OJ). Blood drops on
the floor, the walls, and probably the ceiling.
There are days it looks like Freddy
Krueger lives here.
But we’re not a family of killers,
cutters, or slashers. We’re just a family that gets a ridiculous number of
bloody noses. My two oldest boys don’t just get those slow-leaking bloody
noses. There are days they walk in the door covered with blood from the waist
up.
One day I was in the basement when
Tommy came home. I heard the front door open violently, followed by an urgent
thump, thump, thump, and another door slamming. When I went to investigate, I
saw the trail of blood. It was all over the living room floor, the hallway
floor, on two doors, and every wall in between.
I knocked on the bathroom door.
“Everything OK in there?” I asked.
“Yup,” he replied. “No problem. Just a
bloody nose.”
We’re very ho-hum about those now.
We’ve had so many bloody noses, the boys are able to stop the bleeding themselves.
Usually the only way I find out they had one is by finding the trail of blood
they neglected to clean up. Sometimes I find the trail while it’s still wet.
Other times I don’t see it for a few days. Still other days the gigantic pile
of bloody Kleenex in the bathroom garbage can is the only clue.
That’s the main reason I can’t invite
any cops over to the house.
They know a crime scene when they see
one.
