The Case of the Missing Remote Control

Before my tale begins, you need to know a bit about the routines that have been established since my dad moved to Ridgetown in July of this year. He comes for lunch around 12:30 each day and after lunch is over, he stays and reads the London Free Press newspaper. Then he goes home for a bit, returning around 6:00 for dinner. On Sundays, since we don't get home from church until around 4:00, he doesn't come till then. After we have "tea time", Arend has a nap and Daddy and I go watch TV from 5:00 to 6:00.

At 4:55 today, we went into the family room to watch our usual show (Sue Thomas F. B. Eye) but we couldn't find the remote. Arend was upstairs, but not asleep. I called up the stairs to ask if he had seen the remote control. No.

He came downstairs to help us look. We looked in the family room, the kitchen, the dining room, the living room; but we couldn't find it anywhere. When Arend had watched TV last night, he had been brushing his teeth, so he looked in the bathroom to see if he had taken the remote in there. No.

Seeing the cordless telephone where the remote usually is, I asked Arend if he had brought the cordless phone downstairs today. No. That made me think that probably Arend had absent- mindedly taken the remote upstairs last night and put it on the phone base instead of the actual phone. Arend went back upstairs to see if that was where it was. No.

Daddy thought it might be in my purse (of all things!), but I knew it wasn't there because I had just emptied my purse this morning before we went to church.

Where could it be?

Finally I went back into the bathroom and started opening drawers and...Voila! There it was - in the shoe polish drawer! Arend had polished his shoes in the family room and must have (absent- mindedly) picked up the remote with all the shoe polishing equipment and nicely put it away in the drawer!

Daddy and I missed the first ten minutes of the TV program, but at least the remote was found!