Wally says when retirement gets slow, do puzzles and go crazy

I’m always on a quest in my retirement to keep active and alert, so I thought maybe the community jigsaw puzzle that sits on a table upstairs in the Belleville Public Library downtown might be a good option.

A little work on the puzzle might maintain my manual dexterity and eye-to-hand coordination, force me to think a bit and help keep my razor-sharp mind, or so I read in all those older-adult magazines.

For exercise, I have walking and yard chores. But as far as mental stimulation, after 10,000 hands or so, solitaire can get a bit boring. And I can only do one New York Times crossword puzzle a day.

I have fond memories of working jigsaw puzzles with my mother. She would put one out on a card table, and anyone who visited was welcome to help. Too bad I didn’t remember that those were 500-piece puzzles.

The puzzle at the library is 96 centimeters wide by 68 centimeters tall. That’s about 3 feet by 2 feet for Americans. It has 2,000 pieces, according to the box top. Seemed like more to me.

It is a jungle scene, a fantasy where lions and zebras apparently live in peace with antelopes and a leopard, alligators, a few monkeys and an elephant.

Someone had already assembled the border and had put together a few pieces of the bright pink flamingos that were at the bottom of the puzzle. That was a natural starting point because those pink pieces were a good contrast to the other 1,900 or so pieces that all seemed to be various shades of green.

Unfortunately the box still had at least half the pieces in it. How can you do a puzzle when you don’t have all the pieces out? So I dug into that chore.

Two hours later, I had removed hundreds of pieces from the box but still there were what seemed like a thousand left. Even though I added to the flamingos, pieced together the leopard which was crouched in a tree at the top of the puzzle and found the face of the lion, I was discouraged.

Various colors ranged all across the puzzle, from the purple of the shaded rocks to the bright greens of some grasses. Four separate waterfalls coming down from the top of the puzzle made it hard to combine the bright blue pieces of water. The pieces of distinctive orange flowers were easy to pick out but there were small flowers hanging all around the puzzle.

I had a stiff neck and my back hurt from bending over to look at pieces. I went home.

A couple of days later I went back and someone had pieced together two zebra butts, finished the flamingos and assembled a few pieces of one of the alligators. Still there were miles to go. I puzzled over the pieces for another hour before giving up.

There is one puzzle framed in a display case, so I know at least one has been done before. I don’t know if other puzzles were finished or suffered the same fate as the last puzzle.

It, too, was intricate and hard, and it didn’t survive the curiosity of a small child. I can only hope another one destroys this puzzle before it drives me crazy.

This story was originally published July 30, 2016 at 11:57 AM with the headline "Wally says when retirement gets slow, do puzzles and go crazy."