It seemed like a good idea

 

“No….” I groaned as the screen on my phone went black and then reappeared in strange colors and symbols. Against my better judgment, I had tapped a button, which was supposed to increase my phone’s charging power.

Now what had I done? After years of learning how to use this blasted phone, I finally felt somewhat knowledgeable. Now this. I gritted my teeth and kept pushing buttons. Thank goodness, following several minutes of sheer terror, I got my old familiar screen back.

It seemed like a good idea. Throughout our lives, we utter these words, then move on, trying to forget, only to blunder into uttering them again. My most recent colossal example of this (aside from the phone) is my “jigsaw puzzle” caper.

Puzzles are recommended as good brain exercises especially helpful for older folks. A year ago, I suggested to Dick that we get a jigsaw puzzle, set it out on a table, and work on it. It would be good for us. While growing up I’d loved doing jigsaw puzzles.

I set out to buy one and decided to go big. No reason we couldn’t do a large one. But when I opened the box, I was surprised at the number of pieces filling it. Five hundred? Was that what I’d purchased? A quick look at the box cover answered my question –550.

Okay. I could handle this. I spread the whole thing on the dining room table. The next step was to turn all pieces to the correct side. This took a little longer than planned. Actually, a lot longer. I finally got all the pieces face up. The puzzle was ready to be put together.

I felt proud. This was good for us, would sharpen our mental acuity. For a while it was fun and rewarding. Dick and I worked diligently on the puzzle. It wasn’t as exciting an activity as I recalled from my childhood, but we kept at it.

I got in the habit of checking it out each time I walked by. Once in a while we’d struggle. Other times the pieces came together easily. But, truthfully, after a month, we hadn’t done anything more than the puzzle outline.

“Maybe if we got more organized,” I told Dick. To solve this problem, he cut out two large Styrofoam squares, one for the pieces, and one for the finished puzzle.

This boosted our spirits – for a while, but again, progress was painfully slow. I noticed that, while not exactly avoiding the puzzle, I spent less time hunched over eyeballing pieces. I noticed Dick’s enthusiasm also waning, but we didn’t talk about it. Nobody likes a quitter, right?

Soon I found myself avoiding the puzzle. I can’t speak for my husband but suspect he was doing the same.

The puzzle languished on its Styrofoam bed. We moved it to the rec room. A few months later we moved it to the guest room. There it sits.

It seemed like such a good idea.