Life Stories and Beyond

By Lisa B Kunkleman

 

Seriously? We worked on this big ol’ Coca Cola Ads puzzle for a week and now that we’ve finished, there’s one piece missing and, are you kidding me, we have three duplicate pieces! How does that even happen? So now what do I do with this massive defective puzzle? Give it to Goodwill and let an unsuspecting buyer find out he’s bought a box of disappointment the same way we did?   

 Maybe I can give the puzzle to a local art teacher who appreciates all our reusables for her projects. I see all kinds of ideas on Pinterest using puzzle pieces. And how about the incomplete playing card sets I just found while rummaging through drawers in our hutch. There are oodles of creative uses for a misfit deck of cards. I’m sure the art teacher would love to have them, too. 

I found a fun collection of dice, an hourglass that measures a minute, and long lost playing pieces for games. Let’s see, here are Skip Bo, Taboo, and Catch Phrase instructions. We all know how to play but who knows, maybe we’ll forget as we age. Oh and here’s a little house from The Game of Life. I’m not sure if we still have that game but I’ll keep the house in case it turns up. Seems like the spinner broke and we talked about donating it to Goodwill years ago.

Here’s the Ziploc bag of orphan puzzle pieces. I hope we didn’t give away their parent puzzles. Aha, that’s where the guitar picks got to. And the marbles for Chinese Checkers. Yay. Now more than two people can play at a time.  

Found some more loose playing cards. Our grandson will love playing fifty-two-card pick up with the wayward cards. He can’t count to twenty-two, much less fifty- two but he might stay occupied for at least two minutes if we’re lucky.

I guess it’s time to take apart the puzzle. Man, it was a good one even if it was defective. Should I be honest and write in Sharpie on the back of the box what the situation is? “This is a box of disappointment.” I’ve gotta put those extra pieces back in there.Wait. I have an idea. Maybe I should add in all my other extra homeless pieces. Oo how fun is that? I know what I’ll write, “Enjoy. This one has a surprise ending.”