Online shopping leads to mystery

Published 10:27 am Saturday, June 19, 2021

I must admit that I am a fan of online ordering. Unless I am in dire need of an item, I can order it online and have it delivered to my doorstep in only a few days and I don’t have to deal with traffic, screaming kids throwing a tantrum in the store or the cashier who sneezes into her hand and then hands me my receipt. No thank you.

Since I do order things online quite often, I was not surprised when I found a package on my front porch the other day. After all, there are times when watching late night television combined with eating too many cheese doodles leaves me a bit vulnerable to order whatever is for sale on the infomercial whether I need it or not.

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I already have way too many kitchen gadgets, knives that will never go dull, ovens that will cook a gourmet meal in two minutes flat and a lifetime supply of Ginsu Knives.

My surprise with the package came when I opened it up to find a porcelain pitcher covered with little pink flowers. I thought that I had actually eaten so many cheese doodles that I hit rock bottom and ordered this item with no memory.

I then figured that my wife may have ordered it and forget to tell me. After learning that my wife had actually not ordered the item either, I thought that maybe someone had sent the item for a gift. I checked the return address label on the package and it was from a company that I had never heard of.

I pondered for several weeks on where this item had come from. Since little pink flowers do not exactly match my decorating tastes, I moved around my Bowflex, my George Foreman grill, my Thigh Master and my copy of Sweating to the Oldies VHS tapes and found a place for the pitcher in the attic to store it. Still, I wondered where such an item had come from.

Being the master detective that I am, having watched every episode of CSI that has ever been made, I decided to contact the address on the return label. When I called, it was a company in China that was able to tell me the day, time, and phone number that the item had been ordered from.

Turns out, the pitcher was indeed ordered with my phone. My wife already said she didn’t order it. I was pretty sure that I had not ordered it while I was in a sleep deprived state of desperation. That only left one person in the house — the dog.

My dog has some pretty expensive tastes. He will snub his nose up if I try to feed him bologna and insists on a bite of the steak that I’m eating. He will only submit to going to the vet if I promise to take him to the park later.

So, in essence I figured it was possible that the dog may have ordered the pitcher. When I confronted him on why he ordered the pitcher, he just rolled his eyes at me as if to say, “I’m a dog for goodness sakes. Have you lost your mind?”

After verifying the item was ordered with my phone, I have no other conclusion but to think that while my phone was in my pocket, I was able to pull up a website, select the pitcher, put in my bank card information and address and push the order button.

I guess stranger things have happened. After all, I am the guy that ordered a Snuggie in camouflage.