THERE WAS NO WARNING.
I had just returned from a task that brings meaning and purpose to a retiree (triple-A batteries were on sale across town), but stepping over the threshold of my front door, I knew something was wrong.
In the middle distance, our dining room table — a place of memorable family gatherings and special dinners with friends — had been defiled with dozens of randomly shaped pieces of colored cardboard.
I gasped. This monstrous intrusion had presumably been placed there by the other member of my household, whose name I could not utter without a fierce complaint, the cry of a man wounded by a symbol of the last throes of human existence ... the jigsaw puzzle.
She: Oh, you’re home. I found that puzzle I’d misplaced.
Me: But I’m not ready for puzzles! It’s what you do when there’s little left to life, when you’re one step away from the grave!
She: Don’t be silly.
Me: I’m still a young man! In elephant years, I’m a teenager. I just got my driver’s license, for heaven’s sake!
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