The Case of the Missing Earrings

Older Sister's favorite earrings have not been seen since I wore them to my friend Jumpin's wedding in August.

I swear I returned them. Older Sister swears I didn't. Since this is the perfect opportunity for me to use my Nancy Drew-like sleuthing skillz (I solved the case of the missing lip gloss in kindergarten! Everyone was very impressed), Baby Brother and I have been tearing the house apart in hot pursuit.

Detective tools in use: a magnetic reachy stick I won in the invention fair in sixth grade. And our brains.

We started the search in the bathroom, the place where earrings are removed before taking a shower.

I found many things in the bathroom cupboard, including some Chinese money that I've been seeking for, like, a year. We even found a zipper Baby Sister had adapted into an earring, but not the actual earrings we were actually looking for.

Next we tried Older Sister's room.

BABY BROTHER: Yeah! This is a chance to fiddle with Older Sister's stuff!

As I poked the magnetic reachy stick into corners and drawers and examined the stuff it attracted, Baby Brother amused himself by "fiddling," as he said, with Older Sister's jewelry boxes, music boxes, and decorative boxes.

BABY BROTHER: I'm fiddling with this Fiddler on the Roof music box! Get it?

We looked for a long time, but discovered nothing except that Baby Brother likes the word "fiddle" waaaay too much.

BABY BROTHER: So do I get paid for helping with this?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: If we find the earrings I'll pay you twenty-five cents.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRK: And some fruit snacks.

We looked in my bedroom. No earrings.

I looked in the living room hutch. I found a broken beaded lanyard in a biohazard bag(?), but no earrings.

I even looked in Dad's dresser. The man has four daughters. Half of the misplaced jewelry in this house seems to end up in his top dresser drawer. Alas, the earrings are in the half that doesn't show up there.

No earrings were found. No fruit snacks were shelled out. A bribe will be purchased and given to Older Sister in a strategic manner as appeasement.

The good news is that Mom claims to have seen the earrings recently. The bad news is that they were in a plastic baggie. I did not put them in said plastic baggies. I'm too disorganized to do things like that. This was clearly the work of a professional, who has probably since absconded with the earrings.

Not even my detective skillz will be able to find them.