I have been recruited!

I have loved spy stories, mysteries, and puzzles my entire life. From the Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew novels I read as a child to Robert B. Parker, Tom Clancy, and Ken Follett (to name a few), I plow through as many thrillers as I can, imagining myself as the detective/spy/agent/main character. Of course I am stunningly beautiful, and smart as a whip, in these fantasies. I have the martial arts ability of Black Widow and the puzzle solving skills of Nero Wolfe. No mission is impossible with this package of talent.

Of course, this sideline is confidential. Not even my family is aware of my secret life as a superhero/spy/investigator. Perhaps these abilities can explain why I’m always (well, usually) the person to find lost things in the house, or why always (well, usually) notice when a friend gets a new pair of earrings or loses weight or has a slightly different hairstyle. I’s also the person to notice signs with directions and maps that are useful. (It doesn’t explain why I lose sunglasses so regularly that I refuse to buy them anywhere but the dollar store, but that’s another post.) Such skills would make me very valuable to any spy organization, I’m certain, be it the CIA, the IMF, UNCLE, SHIELD, or even a group so shadowy I don’t know its name. (Yet.)

So I was not surprised when I recently found in my handbag an invitation to join one of these spy organizations. It was a fairly old bag, so I’m certain this invitation was new. I was rooting around looking for a piece of candy when I found it–a completely blank business card. Oh ho! Surely it is not really blank. I must need to decipher the message by using some sort of reagent to reactivate the invisible ink. Or perhaps I need to slip it into a specialized e-reader. Possibly I should just scan it with my phone and a secret link will appear. I’m still considering the options, but once I do, I’m sure the super-secret society recruiting me will be revealed. It’s probably not the CIA, given that I’m well past the age guidelines, but you never know. My special set of skills may have marked me as a need to have agent regardless of my, er, level of maturity.

I may have to give up blogging once I embark on my spy career, but you never know. It’s possible that mom-retiree-cook-volunteer is a perfectly good cover, so nothing in my daily life will change. Then again, it’s possible that I’ve been a spy for years, Mrs. Smith-style, and that I have a secret computer at my scrapbook desk that connects me with my handler. Stay tuned for my upcoming novel, Reflections of a Suburban Spy. Or is it a memoir?