The Case of the Missing Cone

I took my car took get the door damage from an accident in November.  A barrier pole in a school parking lot sideswiped me.  Those things are a menace.  I called my mom to pick me up from the shop.  I took her out to lunch to thank her.  While we were eating, she asked me if I went to her house while she was gone and eat an ice cream cone from her freezer.  I told her no.  She asked if I was sure.  I said yes.  She replied that she would not get mad if I did.  She said she knows she had that ice cream cone in the freezer because she was saving it for her granddaughter Jayden.  I told her that I did not take the cone.

She started to become suspicious, not at me, but of a potential intruder.  Years ago, my mom had a box of graham crackers in her kitchen.  When she went to get some crackers out to snack on, she noticed that the crackers had been broken.  It did not occur to her that the crackers had broken due to rough handling or some type of accidental incident.  No, she thought somebody had broken into her house and broke her graham crackers.  Nothing was missing or vandalised except for the graham crackers that had been broken in half along their pre-cut line.  Every since that incident, she now puts a chair in front of the front door when she leaves the house.  Nevermind that an intruder can easily break through the back door with much ease. 

So, I can see the hamster wheel in her head turning.  She was entertaining the idea that an intruder broke into her house and stole an ice cream cone.  The imagined intruder passed by her flat screen and blue ray player to steal an ice cream cone.  My mom wonders why I think she suffers from paranoia.  Later on that day, my mom calls me to inform me that she found the ice cream cone in the back of her freezer.  She could not dismiss the missing cone due to absent mindedness or what not.  She would not be able to rest until she knew for sure what happened to that cone.  I’m sure if she did not find it that she would have changed her locks and possibly would have installed an alarm system.