Jigsaw Puzzles and Two Kinds of Checkers

by
Patti Dickinson

I bought a terrific jigsaw puzzle right before Christmas. It's a fat snowman, with a banner reading, "Believe" underneath it. It has 500 pieces. It sat on our slanted, distressed antique desk in the living room throughout the holidays. I put exactly FIVE pieces together. A whopping one percent! Not that I gave it a lot of time. I would stop when a kid would be working on it, and make a few attempts, in hopes of finding two pieces that fit together. To be honest, I never really cared much for doing puzzles, and that is because doing puzzles is not a match with my skill set. I am not much good at even making an educated guess about which piece goes where (unless it's an edge piece, because those would have one flat side and that increases the odds of finding a match! And I am absolutely GIFTED at finding the four corner pieces!!!) I have to be VERY careful how I approach taking a stab at joining two pieces. I learned that one the hard way. My kids now know that I am pretty awful at puzzles. So when I try and put two pieces together they stop what they are doing and look to see what I am doing. If I am making an outrageous assumption about how these two pieces could possibly go together, you can feel the eyeball exchange between the two kids who are standing there. All without even looking either kid in the face.

Similarly, I have the same difficulty with checkers. Not a game of chance. Oh, no. Checkers, both the red and black variety and the Chinese kind, require that you visualize the big picture. That you anticipate the predictable moves of your partner. Chinese checkers are pure chaos. Little marbles laid out across the board, with, ideally, one space separating them so you can do the jumping thing and move one little marble very quickly across the board. Likewise the red/black checkers. Confession: I can start with twelve checkers and my kids can start with eight and STILL beat me. And they are NOT gracious winners, either. Oh, no. Howling with laughter as I lose King after King and wind up being backed into a corner with nowhere to go where I won't get double jumped!!

Games I do like? Backgammon. I win and I gloat. Crazy Eights. Old Maid because I am good at the stone face bluffing. (Okay I can hear you thinking that this is a game for four-year-olds....) I am not a competitive game player....I would gladly sell all four railroads in Monopoly to a struggling opponent. Playing games brings people together. Impossible to gather the family around the kitchen table with a bowl of popcorn and not share some laughs and some good conversation. And still be laughing about it all the next morning.