My Love/Hate Relationship With the Jigsaw Puzzle

We had this puzzle the other week that was tough. Tess did some and then, like a rational person, gave up. I, on the other hand, couldn’t stop staring at it. I was going to get this thing completed come hell or high water, even if everyone had gone to bed two hours ago.

The Old Organic Chemistry Days

I don’t know why I get so into these things. It drives my wife crazy. She would like my energy to go toward cleaning the kitchen and mowing the lawn. I think it has something to do with strategy, sequence, and understanding the connection between different parts to achieve your goal. I loved organic chemistry in college (Yes, I’m a nerd) because you had to build (synthesize) these different organic molecules from smaller, basic molecules. You had to choose the right building blocks and solvents, being careful with each step not to reverse what you had accomplished in previous steps. You needed to see the big picture, and see what step comes when. It was really cool to work your way through building a molecule and see the final product that you constructed meticulously, piece by piece. Alas, I knew the lab wasn’t where I wanted to be in life. I needed to be around people in my profession.

The Lovely Red Barn

Anyway, this jigsaw puzzle was of a print of an idyllic farm painting. Lots of soft brush strokes and pieces that looked the same in color. It was tough. But, Tess and I had a system. We naturally started with the low hanging fruit: the perimeter pieces and the red barn (don’t we all start with that red barn?). Once that was done, I started to look for this color, that color, and pieced together anything else that was recognizable. I tried to piece together some familiar shapes to bridge across to the other side of the puzzle (to divide and conquer) and this worked too. But then I got to a point where I got stuck.  I had had run out of easy pieces and was now staring at 80 identical ones that made up the dirt in the foreground. Ugh…

The Stupid Dirt in the Foreground

I had no trick up my sleeve here, other than to just start picking up one piece at a time, and just by close examination figure out exactly where it went. For a while I would take one of 80 nearly identical pieces and painstakingly stare at the box cover to determine which pebble in the foreground I was looking at between by fingers. I would place the piece where it needed to be, even if it wasn’t attached to any other piece yet.  It was awful and tedious. But insanely, I did it. My better, wiser half was in bed by now.

The Devilish Sky

Then came the sky, which was all a uniform off-white. I couldn’t stare down the pieces any longer like I had been with the foreground. They were all the same color and no little pebbles or anything to give me a clue. I needed yet a new strategy. This time I grouped each piece by its shape: 2 “male” sides, 3 “male” sides, etc. I would see what type of piece needed to fit, and just trial-and-error, try each side of each piece that geometrically fit the shape. Eventually I finished that devilish sky. I am not sure that I blinked though, as my eyes were burning at this point.

Catharsis

By seeing the big picture (pun intended), struggling to find new methods when one failed me, and breaking the task down into parts that I could tackle individually, I got there.  It was challenging and fun. I had to be honest with myself. This is why I love being a physical therapist, and this is why I loved organic chemistry. I love the puzzle and the path to solving it. Thank goodness I found the profession that I am in!