Tonight, I was relaxing, catching up on some DVR’d shows and found myself entertained more by Spectrum TV commercials than the show — hilarious, entertaining, memorable, with a message I can actually remember.  Of course, most of the television shows I watch aren’t exactly meant to be entertaining since my genre of choice is crime or murder television.  Luckily for me, Investigation ID satisfies this macabre fascination of mine.

Always a voracious reader, as a child I devoured Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys before graduating to Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, and Arthur Conan Doyle.  I remember my mother worried about my choice in reading matter when I would come home from the library with books all about crime and especially murder.  What she never really understood was that my fascination was focused primarily on the investigation and apprehension of criminals rather than with the criminals.

In fact, back in 1972, after J. Edgar Hoover died, the FBI finally began hiring women and I was determined to be one of them.  What many people don’t know is that Hoover, one of the FBI’s most prominent directors, served for 48 years! While he was considered an American hero for most of that time, according to the Washington Post, after his death the extent to which he abused his power was revealed. The Post describes his transgressions as including “covert black-bag jobs, warrantless surveillance of civil rights leaders and Vietnam-era peace activists, use of secret files to bully government officials, snooping on movie stars and senators, and the rest.”  Interesting…doesn’t some of this sound familiar, hmm….

Anyway, during the Hoover years, there were few women who worked for the FBI.  Some reports say that the few women FBI employees he inherited were fired.  I haven’t found confirmation of that particular fact but it is definite that additional women were not hired.  After J. Edgar’s death, in 1972, a ten-year term limit was established for the Director of the FBI and finally, women could be hired.

Applicants were required to be US citizens, hold either a law school or four-year accounting degree graduate, be between the ages of 23 and 41, and in good physical shape.  I graduated from college when I was 25 and excited about my future as a law enforcement official.  So, armed with my accounting degree, I walked into the FBI office in Philadelphia asking for an application.  Imagine my distress when I discovered that I was not eligible because of something completely beyond my control.  One requirement of which I was unaware was the minimum height eligible was five feet seven inches without shoes!

I am not remotely that tall—even wearing stilettos!  That particular rule was changed about one and a half years after I graduated but, to be honest, I didn’t even discover that fact until researching this post.  My life might have been completely different had I known.

Anyway, I have had a good life and the crime and murder topic obsession has remained with me to this day.  I don’t go anywhere without a book and pretty much, if my television is on, it is usually either crime tv or Fox News.  Boring, right?  Well, it is my life and I get to pick what interests me.  One strange thing I cannot explain is that I enjoy fictional crime when reading but true crime when watching tv.