I wanted a phone that I didn't have to remember to charge so I went to the Value Village and bought myself a corded phone; a reliable non caller ID, non-portable, pulse or tone option old-school Alexander G Bellaphone. The sticker on the bottom of the phone indicates it is a Bell model date stamped January 1987 and every time I see it, I feel like I am a detective in the game of Clue... I can totally picture this phone being used by Mrs. Peacock in the study before she is bludgeoned to death, with a wrench, at the hands of vicious Professor Plum. This phone got me thinking about Clue... and I've decided that most things in our lives can be linked directly back to this classic whodunit board game.
It is fair to say that in order to ask 'that guy' to dance last song of the night (aka Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven) at the end of the grade nine get-to-know-you mixer, each girl on earth has had to channel her inner vixen, Miss Scarlett. Haven't we all assumed our boss to be scatterbrained Professor Plum and underestimated the attention he pays to the extra 10 minutes we sneak in on our lunch breaks? Who amongst us has not had to reach for yet another glass of wine in order to be able to sit sweetly at the dinner table smiling at fat Mrs. Peacock, the passive aggressive phony bitch, as we refrain from pelleting her with dinner rolls and instead ask politely for her to pass the wonderful mashed potatoes? Can you look at yourself in the mirror and honestly say you have always treated Mrs. White, the plain-faced 'attendant' who accidentally double scans your Tide at the till on a busy Saturday afternoon at Wal-Mart or the mousy haired 'servant' who forgets the lemon slice in your water at Kesley's, with the respect she undoubtedly deserves? Is your road rage always suppressed at Colonel Mustard, the stiff lipped old geezer with veteran plates, when he goes straight through a right turn lane and unknowingly cuts you off? And what about Mr. Green? The cunning business man... the guy who refuses to take any less than the $8 which is clearly marked in black sharpie on the masking tape placed carefully on the upper right corner of the originally boxed, practically unused set of Vision cookware at his garage sale? How irritated are you about that guy? How many friends do you tell about cheap-ass Mr. Freakin Green? My guess is that you tell everyone about Mr. Green.... that capitalistic bastard!
We have each thrown our fair share of proverbial daggers, tossed a monkey wrench into someone else's best laid plans or intentionally given someone enough rope so they could simply hang themselves, allowing us to smugly exit the ballroom leaving them dangling; a victim of their own mis-evaluation of facts. Like Clue, most of the conundrums we find ourselves in can be sorted out if we wait our turn, keep our suspicions to ourselves, listen to the other false accusations which inevitably fly around and eventually come to a reasonable solution based entirely on facts. Majority of the time however, we threaten to ram a candlestick up the suspected offenders' ass and chase them from room to room not even caring to look around for the hidden envelope which contains the truth.
The funny thing about Clue is that even when the mystery is solved... we never learn the motive for the offense. I suppose this is because motives are so subjective. If we believe for instance, that Mrs. Peacock really was bludgeoned by Professor Plum as she sat chatting on the phone in the study, it would be a likelihood that if we were able to ask Plum about why he bludgeoned Peacock, he would feel quite justified... Peacock on the other hand (if she were not dead) would likely give quite a different and very believable version of the conflict. Both people involved giving exactly the opposite, first hand testimony of the same event. It's not a coincidence that motive was never a necessity to prove the crime... the accused had enough personal proof to execute the offense and the victim is already well, a victim, at least from one person's perspective... certainly Peacock's! In every instance, we each have our own motives, regardless of what truth the envelope holds... and even if the envelope did reveal to us the motive, who's perspective would it be from? I do wonder however why the envelope never revealed that Col. Mustard did it in the library with Mrs. White.... that would certainly have been a twist and would have lent another meaning entirely to what exactly the 'lead pipe' really was! < insert David Wilcox song here >
My grey plastic phone is not modern, or chic or bluetooth compatible... but I love it nonetheless. Each time I see it, a different story unfolds in my head about what Mrs. Peacock was really talking about that fateful day in the study and I wonder, had she a secret revolver hidden under the desk and noticed Plum in her peripheral vision, acted swiftly and saved herself from Plum's attack how differently things would be perceived. Same day. Same game. Same people. Same weapons (except perhaps the pipe - see above). Same study. Same questions. Same connections. Same phone.
