The Mysterious Case of the Early-riser

When I lived in big cities, I was surrounded by mysteries. They popped up everywhere. In New York, I wondered:

• What were the dreams of Caesar, the boy who fixed my coffee every morning before I even ordered it?
• Why was it so important that day that the drycleaner chase me down the street yelling “Beeeeshop!” just to tell me that he was holding a package for me?
• Was Homeless Babbo Natale actually homeless . . . and was that his girlfriend?
• Why did Shirtless Old Man have such a humongous Chinese paper light? Why did he prefer placing a fan in the window every single night rather than buy an air-conditioning unit . . . and was that his girlfriend?

In Paris, the mysteries seemed even greater since I knew fewer people and didn’t speak the language fluently.

• Why did the tenant in the building next to us adorn his window with real x-rays? (Creepy!)
• Why did the crazy lady on the 1st floor always come out of her apartment to tell me that Clovis the Cat wasn’t her cat, whenever I stopped to pet him?
• How was it possible that I still functioned on such an enormous lack of sleep?
• Why did the hobo spit on Jody and why wasn’t that other guy wearing pants in the Metro?

Here in Nashville, though, the mysteries are dwindling. People share too much. I have discovered a few, although none are as colorful as the unknown motivations of the spitting hobo or the pantless rider.

• What are the dreams of Matt, the boy who fixes Mary and my coffee and entertains us at Bread & Co. in the morning?
• Why do people continue to use street names when giving me directions when they know that I operate on a strictly landmark mapping system here?
• Why does the cat simply stare at the corner of the dining room for an uncomfortable amount of time most nights?

I hope to never understand the answer to the third mystery, but the first two could be solved easily enough. The second really isn’t a mystery so much as a frustrating fact. Just as I feared that all of the mysteries would be lost, however, one most mysterious mystery presented itself at the most mysterious place of all, the grocery store.

On Saturdays, Tom goes to the Harris Teeter to buy the Wall Street Journal. Every Saturday the Harris Teeter has sold out of the Wall Street Journal and Tom must go down the street to the Kroger. Tom mentions this to the Harris Teeter manager most Saturdays. The manager doesn’t seem to care. A few Saturdays ago, Tom went to the Harris Teeter particularly early and still they were sold out. But how? How does a Harris Teeter in Nashville sell all of their Wall Street Journals before noon every single Saturday? When Tom posed this question to the keeper of the WSJs, the keeper replied that a man comes every Saturday right when they open and he buys all of the Wall Street Journals – every last one.

Tom proposed a logical solution, “Why don’t you order more copies?”
The keeper responded, “Well, he buys every one we have.”

Yes, clearly that is the soundest explanation. It’s entirely reasonable to assume that no matter how many copies of the WSJ you ordered, this mystery man would purchase all of them (never mind that he is buying them to resell them somewhere else). Anyway, there are many ways to solve this problem – order more copies, put one aside for Tom, tell the reseller that he can’t buy more than 3 – but how to solve the problem isn’t nearly as intriguing as how to solve the mystery of the WSJ Weasel (aka "W-squared" or "W2").

We have a few theories. As a family, we have narrowed the W2’s location down to the stretch of Highway 70 between the Kroger in Bellevue and the Harris Teeter in Belle Meade. Our method wasn’t interesting enough to describe here. The W2 could be the manager of the Bellevue Publix, which isn’t yet on the WSJ route, but will be soon. We think he might be the proprietor of the Loveless Motel, but we’ve yet to call to confirm that they offer the Wall Street Journal in the restaurant on Saturdays.

Unfortunately, the most effective way to solve this mystery is for us to show up at the Harris Teeter on a Saturday before it opens and go from there. We are currently in the planning stages of attack. To be continued, of course . . . .