CSI: Midget Invasion

Lying has been a big problem in our house for a while now. Big enough, that tonight we cracked down. We found a wad of gum stuck to the banister, and of course every kid in the house claimed they had no idea how it got there. Pretty certain that the hubby and I hadn't done it and then forgotten, we decided to get serious about finding out who did it.

Lucky for us, whoever did it left a nice clear thumbprint in the gum. The hubby carefully peeled it off without compromising the print, and we went about the task of fingerprinting our children. Overkill? Maybe, but dagnabit, we were going to find out who did it.

It took a long time of comparing gum and said fingerprints. We even resorted to photographing them to blow them up and look. I took the first shift, and narrowed it down to two people. The hubby then took over, doing the nitty gritty work of discovering some sort of unique pattern in the gum that could help identify our culprit. During this time period jokes ensued about really having it done CSI style and giving each kid a wad of gum and having them smoosh it on the banister. After quite a while of being hunched over the gum and fingerprint sheet, the hubby suddenly looked much perkier, and asked Ryan back in to reprint him. We took some measurements and macro pictures of Ryan's thumb.

The evidence was overwhelming, and just like a CSI episode that is not a cliff hanger, Ryan broke down and confessed.

We had a good conversation with him about being glad he finally told the truth, and also about how we sympathize about how scary it can be to be honest. He was saddled with some chores as punishment, and there were hugs all around. Hopefully it taught him something, that when it comes to his parents not tolerating lying around here, sh*t just got real.

For fun, here's the pictures if you'd like to see the hubby's crack observation skills.

*click each to see bigger*

The gumprint:



Some key features he noticed:



Ryan's thumb:



Same features on Ryan's thumb (remember, a print is the mirror image of the finger):




*Puts on her cool sunglasses and walks off into the sunset*