When I was a child, I watched television. Yeah, watched all the silly reruns with the six-kid blended family, and the one about seven eegits on a deserted island, but that was during the day. I remember sneaking out of my room when I should have been in bed to watch M*A*S*H though the half open door of the room where my parents were watching it. Once they figured out what I was doing, they just let me join them. I was about seven, and I'm not sure I understood every funny bit, but I knew it was funny. With my parents, I watched movies until I fell asleep, nature documentaries, costume dramas, but I loved mysteries the most. My mother did too, so we watched them all; the ones with the husband and wife detectives, the ones where the detective looked like he'd walked right off the Malbaro ads, but the ones with Peter Falk playing Lt. Columbo, with his cigars and raincoat, I remember those. I stayed up right through those no matter how tired I got.
The next day, I secretly felt like I big shot at school. I figured that I was the only kid in the second grade who'd seen the show. I didn't even have to beg my parents to let me watch it; they did and I could too. My father explained some references to me. I remember him telling me what “rosebud” meant in Citizen Kane because you wouldn't understand the mystery without knowing. I was usually sitting with my mother, and she'd ask if I knew what was going on. Living with people who still used Irish slang, Columbo's accent was very funny to me, most of all when my father copied it.
My favorite part was when Columbo would ask the killer about something his wife, Mrs. Columbo, wanted to know. That made me laugh because he never used his wife's name, ( I liked it even better when he talked about his dog ). That would happen every time. I watched those movies for years, and slowly, slowly, I saw what he was doing. I knew that when he wheeled around and asked just one more question, he would pull the entire mystery together. It was practically choreographed, but it always worked seamlessly.
He was no Sherlock Holmes. He wasn't remote and brilliant. He wasn't working outside the system to bring about justice as he saw it. He was a detective solving murders, this was his job.
Liam likes Sherlock Holmes, both the 19th century original and the 21st century incarnation. Last autumn, curling up on the couch and watching Sherlock was our Sunday-night date. I got a kick out of watching him catch on. I loved sharing guesses about what would happen next. Mysteries take work, and they're always better with a buddy. The story and the solving are the point.
When I learned of Peter Falk's death last week, I thought about how much I'd loved the Columbo movies. Thirty-odd years later, I wonder if I loved the character and the crimes he solved, because a mystery meant you needed to think. Maybe that's it, but I think it had just as much to do with enjoying the story with my family.
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