Puzzles: The missing piece in your life

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Puzzles: The missing piece in your life
Sofia Krusmark with her Saturday Evening Post dog puzzle. Sofia Krusmark | Collegian

It was 1:22 a.m.

The stairs rattled, and someone slowly tip-toed down the steps: my housemate’s boyfriend. Ah, of course. 

“Sofia, what the heck are you doing up right now?”

He peered into my room, where an overpriced hipster lantern lit up my once-tired, now-perked-up eyes.

 “Come here. I’ll show you.”  

The wide-eyed and very confused boyfriend approached. Almost immediately, he was introduced to the multicolored, slightly jagged, and perfectly confusing world of my puzzle.

“I’ll go to bed once this dog is done,” I said.

The cocker spaniel at the bottom of the puzzle was almost finished. I was on the prowl for splashes of off-whites, dark browns, and a twinge of orange-red in the pile of unused pieces. If you’re curious, the puzzle is a whimsical image of Saturday Evening Post newspapers covered with all sorts of dogs. Dogs taking baths. A few dogs are dressed in tutus. There’s one dog on his newspaper delivery route. Another one is sitting in a beauty parlor for his bougie haircut. 

Even though it was past 1 a.m., my night was still young, but strictly for de-stressing purposes. I’d returned home from a full day of intensive newspaper work, piano practice, five hours of class, and many irritable moments that kept my eyes rolling. This was my detox.  

Some people come home to screaming children, a doting significant other who cooks gourmet dinners, or — in most of our cases — homework we wish we’d done in the library instead of everything else we did that day. But I returned home to the little white table topped with 1,000 puzzle pieces.

Why wouldn’t anyone want to come home to a peculiar wonder like this one?  

For me, my puzzle became a project I celebrated because it is detached from all obligations. If a day went by where I found no pieces, it was okay. There was no penalty at stake for my lack of progress. On the days when I found more than 50 pieces, I’d laugh about an accomplishment practically irrelevant to anyone else. It’s the small victories like these that highlight the grey days.

More than that, my puzzle was a rare opportunity to create a little, imaginative story that steals me away from the bigger one I live every day. No doubt, I’m grateful for the colorful and crazy life I live, but when I sift through my puzzle pieces, I’m not thinking about all the things that went wrong during my day, or even the things that went right for that matter. I’m thinking about finding all the pieces for the dog who is getting his haircut. Each piece becomes a small sigh of relief and a glimmer of delight.  

 Puzzles are timeless, too. They’ve never ceased to stump the toddler putting together his four animals into the plain wooden board, and the milestone 1,500 will always have a place in a family home. There’s a reason they’ve been around since the 1700s. 

I’d initially dragged the little white table from our house’s living room into my bedroom, but after working on the puzzle alone for a while, I decided to bring it back out into the public area. Of course, there was so much left to do, but I’d swapped my little escape for an open invitation to anyone who wanted to participate in my grand endeavor of puzzling. I’m glad I did.

On a particularly hard day, I invited 12 of my closest friends for tacos. Once dinner was over, they could have gone home. But they invited themselves to help with the puzzle instead. Looking back on it, I’m sure they stayed to support me, but I won’t forget the image of my friends gathered in the living room around the Saturday Evening Post dogs.

Soft music shaded the background. Two friends who hardly knew each other sat hip-to-hip, digging through the box to find the pieces they needed. A couple friends ground their knees on our musty wood floor because from that spot it was easier to immerse themselves in the story the puzzle told. Good conversations filled the air. I smiled.

Scattered and oddly cut paper pieces had somehow created a vibrant space of community.

Sure, books, conversations, and wine (of course) can create community. But there’s something magical about a puzzle. It’s a project simple enough for anyone to do, but complex enough that keeps people around for just a minute longer. 

My proposition is simple. Buy a puzzle, and invite your friends to do it with you some days. It might not change your life, but it could change your day just a little.

 

Sofia Krusmark is a senior studying philosophy. She is the Culture Editor for the Collegian.