Scene of the Crime

Sherlock Holmes is one of my heroes. His cool demeanor and powers of observation are attributes I’ve always admired and wish I possessed myself. His keen eye for detail, his esoteric understanding of the world and his profound ability to distill seemingly insignificant information into astounding conclusions turned me into a wannabe sleuth from the time I first read The Hound of the Baskervilles when I was 10.

Even now, it’s not uncommon for me, when meeting someone for the first time, to surreptitiously cast my eyes down at their shoes, or to linger just a moment with the introductory handshake to see if I might discover a particular clue—a telling callus or a fleck of dirt carried on the edge of their shoe—that might divulge more about the person than they would care to divulge themselves.

This constant searching for clues is something that over time has served me well, and while I haven’t solved any crimes or restored any purloined jewels, it has generated in me a willingness to observe and a belief that even the tiniest pieces of evidence can be meaningful.

Most of the forensic research I do these days actually applies to myself, however. As a recovering alcoholic, self-examination is an important part of my recovery program and I’ve been taught that it’s better to take my own inventory than to take yours.

When I was drinking, there was plenty of information available as I searched for answers to the inevitable question, “Who am I?” but unfortunately what fingerprints I could see were smudged and the evidence was so wildly jumbled that it was difficult to reach any valid conclusions.

But now, in sobriety, there are multiple clues I uncover on a daily basis that provide me with critical information about myself and what’s going on in my world. The source of many such clues can be found in my own speech, in the rote answers I regularly give people in response to such simple questions as “What do you want to do for dinner?” or “Which movie would you like to see?”

For instance, I’ve heard myself saying “I don’t care” an awful lot over the past few weeks. In fact, it’s become my standard response.

“What do you want for dinner?”

“I don’t care.”

“Where do you think we should go for...(fill in the blank).”

“I don’t care.”

The response started innocently a while ago as an accommodation, a selfless gesture—my way of saying, “I don’t have any strong feelings on this issue and am happy to go along with whatever you decide.” But, before long it had morphed into a means of detaching myself from those around me and absolving myself of any responsibility for decisions that needed to be made. 

“I don’t care” had made the incredible journey from an expression of apparent flexibility to a barricade behind which I could hide, and I had no idea the transformation had even occurred. But, the more I used the phrase, the hollower it rang until suddenly I could hear myself saying it and sense the detachment hidden behind it.

It was like the night I finally heard myself slurring when I was drunk. Lord knows, I did it all the time, but there was one night in particular when the words tumbling awkwardly out of my mouth like chunks of Jello after a couple of shots of whiskey and a few beers at the bar actually registered.

Sitting there, staring off into the smoke from my cigarette, confused as to how I had gone from stepping idly into the bar in the first place “just to have one” to ending up clutching the bar stool yet again, a teacher I greatly respected passed by me at the bar. Recognizing her, I waved dramatically and called out. She stopped briefly in front of me and I could see a look of concern spreading across her face as I continued to talk, the words spilling out sideways. It was like one of those war movies where a young GI gets hit but doesn’t know it. He keeps on talking to his buddy whose face goes unaccountably sour. Then, after a while, the GI looks down at himself, the blood soaking through his shirt, and recognizes finally that he has been hit.

The moment I actually heard the slurring, I knew how bad off I really was. Unfortunately, I didn’t stop drinking right away because of it, but it wasn’t long afterward that I was introduced to AA and that experience in the bar, along with other evidentiary moments of recognition, encouraged me to stick around and, finally, to get sober.

So, as the hidden message behind the phrase “I don’t care” finally bubbled to the surface recently and my attempts at avoiding responsibility under the guise of an easy-does-it attitude became clear, the sleuth in me had triumphed once again. 

As the experience of Sherlock Holmes makes clear, clues are everywhere. And, in this particular case, a case I’ll call “The Curious Case of the Hidden Agenda,” I realized that I actually needed to care, even about things that seemed inconsequential.

In order to break the pattern of detachment I had settled into, I needed to start expressing some preferences, even if I didn’t really have any. It wasn’t like I had to start generating—and expressing—a whirlwind of emotion, I simply had to start caring about things again.