Some Things Never Change!

Life is like a jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing.

                      Anonymous

When I was a kid I’d like to say I was a little rambunctious (my Grandma’s words) but that is probably not true I was probably a lot rambunctious. I was constantly moving, rarely sitting and I never walked I always ran everywhere that I thought I should be. Problem was that I always thought I should be somewhere else. Some things never change.

I have no idea where all this energy came from and still comes from but I am pretty sure my teachers and my Mom grew tired of watching me flit about the room. My Grandmother used to say “Someday you are going to wear yourself out and just drop”, so far she has been wrong but I must admit some days now I find lying down comes easy. My Mom had very interesting ways of trying to slow me or should I say us down, let me jump in to say I was not the only rambunctious one in my family. Thinking back I do not know how Mom dealt with all that constant running. I know she had to be creative; I give her credit for that. She had one of many secret weapons.

The first one I remember was jigsaw puzzles, Mom would dump a huge million piece puzzle on the table and make us sit around the kitchen table and “work on it”, I must tell you this was a little table with at least six or more kids sitting around it in a crowded little house with a kitchen window that looked out on to the yard and a tree where I truly wanted to be. This would usually be on rainy day because as far as I can remember we were never in the house when the weather was nice, which was fine with me because that was where the work and noise lingered. Most times my Mom would help us do the puzzle while tending to crying babies or cooking fried bologna on the stove. Funny the things you remember, I can still imagine the smell and taste of it smothered in ketchup, usually to cover its blackened appearance and burned taste. I remember always needing to be free and running so this puzzle thing always felt like torture to me. Some things never change.

I would watch my sister Pearly sitting still working away with a huge smile on her face and I always wondered how she could possibly be enjoying this sheer torture. I would give her a kick under the table and she would scream resulting in our fighting and Mom would have to intervene usually with a swat to the ear or moving one of us to the other side of the table. I would again do the same thing to whoever was lucky enough and happened to be sitting beside me. I knew eventually Mom would grow tired of the fighting and tell me to go sit in the living room. Sometimes this plan did not work, I think she figured me out and so I had to think of something else. I would pick up one of those little pieces and stare at it for a long time and then I would look over to perfect Pearly putting them together so fast and I thought I would show her. I placed the piece in a spot that looked right to me, I must admit with very little thought. Well of course it did not fit so I proceeded to hammer it in with the palm of my hand. This is the point where I must tell you we had to finish the puzzle before we could leave the table and I just wanted to get it done. I hammered on it until Mom let it be known and not very quietly, that this was not allowed. I picked it up and tried it in another spot. I was getting frustrated by this time and watching Pearly was certainly not helping. Smile smile.

After picking up piece after piece and getting extremely bored and agitated I finally found that one piece that would fit with just one minor alteration; I slid the piece under the table on my lap and proceeded to rip the extra tab off. I slid it back from under the table and just as I thought, it fit perfectly. Pearly started whining to Mom about me wrecking the puzzle and I will not tell you how well that went over. Your imagination can take over here I am not going to do all the work.

Thinking back Mom had many great ideas about slowing me down but I was just not a puzzle person, I like to think of myself as free thinker and never feeling those restraints of the word “normal”(whatever that means) way of doing things. I also must say I probably would have gotten away with it if Pearly was not so competitive and so darn good at jigsaw puzzles and other puzzles. Some things never change.

Another secret weapon of Mom’s was Monopoly, yes hours and hours of a game I found extremely boring and torturous. I did everything I could to start a fight or get the Go to Jail card just so I did not have to play. Now that I think of it my Mom tried everything to curb my rambunctious behaviour or at least slow me down. I know Pearly is still very good at puzzles and Monopoly but I can still “run” circles around her. Some things never change.

Later