This little adventure actually began on Friday when my young son and I found ourselves in the Wal-Mart toy aisle. In an effort to talk him down from the $20 Batman toy that he thought he couldn’t live without, I asked him “What do you think about one of these puzzles?”
He appeared unsure at first, but I told him we’d put it together when we got home. I told him he could pick it out and everything, and he seemed to enjoy this newfound power and authority. I found myself leaning toward the one that showed wild ducks in flight, but he wanted the one of four boats moored to a dock, so that’s the one we got.
The puzzle had been marked down as a clearance sale item and cost about dollar, so I was more than a little pleased by that aspect of the endeavor. Fast-forward to when we got home and broke out the puzzle on the kitchen table. We began assembling the border pieces and 15 minutes later, my son lost interest in the project, having been lured away by the siren song of another episode of SpongeBob Squarepants.
I worked on the puzzle all Friday afternoon and into the night. I got back up on Saturday and hate to admit that I spent almost the entire ensuing day working on the puzzle. I probably started around 6:30 a.m., ate two meals at the table, and eventually finished sometime after 9 p.m. I did take a brief break to drive to Monroeville to help my wife load up a queen-size bed that someone gave us.
To say that once I got started I couldn’t stop would be an understatement. When my feet hit the floor on Saturday, I immediately had the urge to work on the puzzle, which seemed to bring out the worst in my compulsive nature. I’d planned all sorts of things for Saturday – jogging, hours of cutting grass, reading the latest Clive Cussler novel, etc., etc. All of that got pushed off to the side though in the face of the 1,000-piece, Wal-Mart clearance sale puzzle.
As I drew near the end, I began to get the feeling that I’d accomplished something monumental – like I’d just graduated from college or beaten Halo 2. The kids did “help” along the way, so I let them ceremoniously place the last few pieces of the puzzle in place. They seemed to get a kick out of that.
I was more than a little surprised by the physical element to this project. I’d say that altogether, I spent more than 20 hours working on the puzzle and when I was done, my neck, back, shoulders and backside were throbbing in pain from hours at the kitchen table. When I woke up the next morning I felt like I’d been beat with a bed slat. There is something to be said for moderation when it comes to the assembly of a 1,000-piece puzzle.
In the end, I enjoyed scratching another item off my bucket list. How many of you have ever completed a puzzle of this size? When and where did you do it? What kind of puzzle was it? Have you done it more than once? Let us know in the comments section below.
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