The Case of the Vanishing Splenda Bowl

It started out like any other day. Josie made a pot of coffee, but when I went to get a cup, I could not find the small silver bowl that we keep the Splenda in. Josie confessed that she had noticed it missing a few days earlier. She assumed that the cleaning lady, who is usually very logical about relocating items, might have put it somewhere new or in getting ready for company perhaps Josie herself had absent-mindedly shoved it away somewhere. I looked high and low in every kitchen cabinet and drawer, but to no avail. Several days later, Bryan and Meghan came to visit, and we took the search up to a whole new level. We searched the entire house, inside and out, but came up with nothing. Here's how I finally solved the mystery.

The picture on the left is how things always used to be. On the right is the silver Splenda bowl, in plain sight. But that is not the way things looked when I went to get my coffee that morning.



Here is how the closet looked when the mystery began, everything looks exactly as it did before, except that the bowl is just plain gone. Study the picture carefully and you will conclude, as we did, that someone had simply moved it elsewhere. A little time and distance have passed since that morning, including a trip to Rochester for me. Josie continued to make coffee every morning, and even co-opted a glass teacup to be used as a replacement Splenda bowl. Bryan had suggested that we go out and buy a replacement, because that would insure that the original would be found. But the morning after I returned from Rochester, a wondrous event took place.

Josie made coffee as normal, but I didn't get a cup right away. Instead, I waited until just before we were going to leave to go pick up my mom. Then I figured I would just take a 'to-go' cup so I could drink it in the car. When I opened the closet I saw my favorite green Starbucks cup- the one that really holds a lot of coffee. I always use it first if it is not in the dishwasher, because it holds a lot more than my other to-go cups, including by silver Xerox cup which as you can see is standing immediately to the left of the green Starbucks cup in the picture. As I was reaching for the green cup I realized that the Xerox cup was not the one I'm used to and is, in fact even taller than the green Starbucks cup. I said to Josie, "Where did this new to-go cup come from?"

"I have no idea", she answered. I took the cup down from the shelf, and just look at what I found!


The Splenda bowl was on tip of the Xerox cup, and was such a perfect match, it blended right in with the cup making it totally invisible to all of us who were searching for it! This is a magnificent example of why you can never really believe everything you see, or fail to see, with your own two eyes!