Sarah: Elementary, Dear Watson

For several years, I've been battling the license plate bending trolls. Seriously! I'll walk out to my car one day, and one of my license plates will be inexplicably bent away from my car. For a while I had friends with shrivelly raisins for brains (not ALL of my friends, just a few!) and I thought that perhaps they would bend my plates as a prank. Not a funny prank, but an appropriately mindless one. However, when I moved away to college, my plates continued to bend. I considered that, living in the dorms, this may be an occupational hazard of being a college student. Still, I could not understand why none of my friends or roommates seemed to struggle with bent plates.

Today, however, I believe I have found the cause. I went through the car wash to restore my beloved little car to its favorite shiny clean state, and when walking out to my car again after picking something up at home, I discovered that my license plate was as badly bent as it ever was. It's been the carwash all along! Although I sometimes wash my car by hand, whenever I rely upon the machinery in our modern world to do this menial chore for me, I always use the same carwash. It's a comfort-in-familiarity thing. I can't explain it. Anyway, I think I've solved the mystery of the bent license plates. We can all sleep better tonight.