It's Amazing How Much You Can Learn About A Boyfriend Just By Hiring A Private Investigator
By Amy DeBaun
Do we ever really know the people we live with? I can’t help but wonder about that?. I've known my boyfriend John Kinabrew for some time now and together we’ve had the most beautiful, sharing, and trusting relationship anyone could ever want. But even after all this time, my friends Jen Bevins and Bret Bicoy kept telling me to think of all the amazing things I could find out about John - if I only had just a little bit of professional help. So recently, during a visit with Jen and Bret, we called an old friend and surveillance expert Matt Goode from the car, and I’ve been wonderfully surprised at all the things I’ve learned about John.
For instance, every day on his way to work, John stops at Dunkin' Donuts to get a coffee. What an adorable little quirk - all the more so because the computer-simulated aerial map of John’s route that Matt included in one of his weekly dossiers clearly shows that the doughnut shop is seven blocks out of his way. Cute, huh? Well, that's my man! I wonder if Matt will ever truly document all his funny little ways.
Oddly enough, the receipts that John tossed out the window - who knew that sweet little man of mine would turn out to be a litterbug? - show that he has never purchased a single doughnut along with his coffee during three months of 24-hour surveillance. So why would a person go seven blocks out of his way just for coffee, when he doesn't even eat doughnuts? Just another of love's little unknowable puzzles that even the professional services of a surveillance expert like Matt who charges $500 a day plus expenses can't explain.
Of course, even when you live with someone as lovingly as I do with John, there are little things you have to work on - but that's just part of what keeps the magic alive. Sometimes, John says that I don't listen to him enough, and having poured over the typewritten transcripts of all our conversations from the past three months, I admit I could improve in that area.
Sure, it's all "little things" - but it's those little things that make me crazy about him all over again each morning. Take his vocabulary usage patterns: According to the old high-school report cards that Matt came across in John’s parents' basement, John was never very good in English, but re-reading the text of our discussions from earlier this week, I noticed he used the term "maladroit" in the correct context on three separate occasions.
Isn't that the most adorable thing you ever heard?
I would've thought that it was on some "word of the day" list, but Matt forwards me all John’s e-mail, and yesterday was "circumambient." And I know for a fact, thanks to photos that Matt has secured, that John does not have one of those word-a-day calendars on his desk at work - he has a Far Side one. Who would have guessed that, after all this time, I'd still be able to uncover a quirky, loveable trait that bears further investigation. I should tell Matt to work on that.
It seems like ever since I hired Matt, I've seen John in a whole new light, and I don't mean the infrared he uses to photograph him while he's sleeping. For example, I never would have guessed that he gets up when I'm sleeping on as many as four occasions a night. That's the kind of thing that doesn't even cross your mind until a man with night-vision binoculars and a telescopic camera lens stations his van across the street from your bedroom window and monitors every moment of the cold, still night.
Isn't that the wonderful thing about love, though? The way there's always some new facet to uncover that you never knew before, little mannerisms they have that you never noticed - like the surprising way that, in the footage from the super-miniaturized motion-sensor camera Matt installed in one of the bathroom tiles, John likes to scratch his left ear while sitting on the toilet.
We've been together for some time, but I never get bored with John. I'll bet even after 10 more years, I could still stare at surreptitiously acquired video footage of his eyes for hours.
Thanks Jen & Bret. This was a wonderful idea!
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