As a mystery fan, I’m constantly on the lookout for spies, poisoners, counterfeiters and other bad guys & girls. I mean, everybody whom Goldy Schulz knows eventually is connected to a crime and Miss Marple can’t walk out of her front door without stumbling over a dead body. Sadly or luckily — not sure which — so far I’ve only been called upon to solve such perplexing cases as “What happened to the last piece of caramel cake?” and “Why is the coffee grinder making that funny sound?”  And then this happened: The Case of the Disappearing Earring. I’ll start with the facts. One recent evening, my husband and I went to dinner directly after I got home from work. Back at home after dinner, I started to take off jewelry and makeup. I stood by my dresser to take off my earrings and put them back in their spot on a jewelry stand (a re-purposed vertical CD holder). I took one earring off and put it where it belonged and then suddenly realized the corresponding earring was not in my other ear. Not a disaster, but I liked those earrings and didn’t want to lose one. So I alerted my husband to the possibility that he might find a random earring in his car (leading to much hilarity, of course, about finding lady things in his car hahahaha) or somewhere on the floor and if he did, to please pick it up and give it to me because it was MIA. He said he would and I went to bed, not really worried about the Missing Earring. Got up the next morning, got dressed, put on jewelry, went to work, came home and once again stood by my dresser to take off my earrings and put them up. So far, so good. But as I was putting that day’s earrings back where they belonged, I noticed that the missing earring was right there, separated from its twin that I had worn the day before but in the general location of where it should be. I was momentarily startled and then started to consider the possibilities of how the Missing Earring had become un-missing. Here are those possibilities, ranked in order of least to most likely:

• The earring had fallen off and then, with its magical powers of awesomeness, had found its way back home on its own. I mean, look, if we can find our phones and our cars and our TV remote controls, stands to reason we can find our earrings. Or they can find us. I know that this seems highly unlikely, but still. And now I am going to go invent a tiny little tracking chip that we can all put in our favorite earrings. I’ll let you know how it goes.
• My husband had found the earring and put it back. Again, this seems highly unlikely because if this had happened, he 1) would have triumphantly told me about it and 2) would never have approached my jewelry stand himself because (see above description of this being an old CD rack) it is a bit rickety and shaky and prone to tumble over into jewelry pick-up-sticks and he would not want to be the cause of this happening. Again.
• On the evening in question, when I was back from dinner and taking off my jewelry, I absent-mindedly took off both earrings and simply did not remember. But it’s not that I was absent-minded. No, indeed. I probably was thinking of something Really Important (such as “What happened to the last piece of caramel cake?”) and simply not paying attention. This is a definite possibility (“I just wasn’t paying attention … ” seems to figure into many conversations I have with my husband) but a troubling one because if you don’t pay attention to your own earrings, who will?
• And now we come to the most troubling possibility of all. It might maybe could have been that I only had one earring on the whole day. Perhaps, when I got dressed that morning, I only put on one earring. Could this be what happened? (Refer to previous paragraph about Not Paying Attention.) I know I have long hair and had worn a scarf that day, but surely if I’d only had on one earring, somebody would have said something. Don’t you think? On the other hand, this reminds me of once when I’d gone into one of our local boutiques and after I’d left, I realized I’d lost an earring (totally different situation since I KNEW I’d had two at one point). I went back to the shop and asked the owner if she’d found it. “No, you only had one earring when you came in,” she said. I couldn’t believe it. “Why didn’t you say something?” I asked her. “I thought you meant it that way!” she said. And while I appreciated the compliment that I was edgy enough to wear only one dangling earring, I am not edgy at all and prefer pretty much to have my ears match.

So what do you think? I’m sort of leaning toward the fourth possibility, as troubling as it is that a) I’d forgotten to put two earrings in that morning and b) nobody commented on it. But then, I don’t usually check out folks’ earrings, either, so that might be too much pressure to put on people. And, bottom line, I’ve got both earrings back now, so all is well. Goldy & Miss Marple would be proud.