The Curious Case of the Missing Godfather

As those of you who read this humble blog know, my real job, second job, and family (including a wonderfully energetic toddler) occupy about 143% of my available hours in a normal week. However, a couple of weekends ago, I found myself with that most amazing of things - a few spare hours.

So, when the perfect storm happens - in this case, my wife and son were both asleep and I wasn't on deadline for a review or a proposal - it's very exciting.

For the past couple of months, I'd been playing The Godfather on the Xbox 360. Yes, it's old, and yes, it's a GTA clone with a bunch of repetitive tasks. Say what you want, but I was kind of enjoying it. I'd progressed enough through the story to the point where my guy was pretty badass, and I'd completely taken over the entire neighborhood of Little Italy. So I was on my way to becoming the Don of NYC.

Eager to continue my atrocity-fueled success, I was ready to pop the game back in my 360 and settle in for a couple of hours of mayhem. So I looked around for the game. And looked around some more. Then I went into other rooms, since it was not in my office. Then I went downstairs. Twice.

And a funny thing happened. The game was gone.

Keep in mind, I am bordering on obsessive-compulsive when it comes to keeping track of my games. After all, there are only a few categories of stuff I even own - clothes, video games, video game machines, CDs, iPods, and cellphones make up 97% of all of my worldly posessions. So the fact that every single game I own was in its right place, but the one freaking game I wanted to play was missing was just ridiculous for a bunch of reasons.

So I searched, and I searched. I yelled at my wife, and she yelled back at me. One thing is sure, though: I did not move the game anywhere, because there is no other place in the world where I would be able to play it other than my office.

So, long story short, there is only one suspect in this "crime", and that is the 19-month old boy who inhabits this house along with his parents. I don't know how, but I have to think that he wandered into the office, grabbed the game (like he grabs lots of things) and brought it to some magical place where he stashes all sorts of stuff, and it sits there to this day.

No matter what, though, I can't find it.

After a hopeless 90 minutes of searching, I gave up and decided to start something else. Sifting through my huge pile of unplayed games, I settled on a game I should've played years ago and haven't - Half Life 2 on the Orange Box for 360.

Somehow, I think I'll never see The Godfather again.