Right up until a short time ago I thought that jigsaw puzzles were the dumbest form of recreation ever invented by man. I mean what is a jigsaw puzzle anyway? It's just a ripped up picture that you laboriously put together again. Who in their right mind would ever subject themselves to that unless they had a gun at their head? Well, that's what I used to think. Now, dear reader, I've learned to respect them... and so should you! 
This dawned on me a few years ago when I was called for jury duty and had to report to a warehouse-sized waiting room somewhere in the arm pit of Los Angeles. For three days I waited there all day without being called. The boredom was killing me! I brought a book, a drawing pad and an mp3 player but nothing worked. The book was always the wrong book, it's no fun drawing bored people and I'd heard everything on the player a million times before. I thought I'd go nuts!I tried to watch TV but all that was on were garbled commercials and soap operas and no one would let me change the channel. Nobody in the seats next to me would even talk. The girl beside me treated me like a masher and the old black women all around me just wanted to knit. I just had to sit there and listen to the hum of the flickering fluorescent lights while the Earth turned.
Somewhere along the line it dawned on me that I'd seen some old jigsaw puzzles on a table near the door. There were puzzles of Mount Rushmore and old 70s sitcom actors and a really sentimental one with a Huck Finn-type boy fishing with a stick and a string. I remember the title in big letters across the box: "Blessings on Thee, Barefoot Boy!"
Somewhere along the line it dawned on me that I'd seen some old jigsaw puzzles on a table near the door. There were puzzles of Mount Rushmore and old 70s sitcom actors and a really sentimental one with a Huck Finn-type boy fishing with a stick and a string. I remember the title in big letters across the box: "Blessings on Thee, Barefoot Boy!" No sooner did the thought enter my mind than I chased it out again. No, no! I couldn't bring myself to stoop so low! Anything would be better than puzzles! I spent another hour trying to sleep and make conversation with knitters and crazy people and finally I threw in the towel. OK...a puzzle! Wearily I cast a glance the table . All the puzzles were gone but one, the Barefoot Boy.
Well there was nothing for it so I listlessly stood up and slowly began to make my way to the table. I felt so stupid! After every step I had to fight down the urge to go back to my seat again. Weeeell.... after a bit I noticed a gay guy eyeing the table from across the room and he got up and started walking toward it. I figured he was just strolling for the exercise but I quickened my step just the same. As soon as I did that he began to walk faster. Then I walked faster, then he walked faster. There was no mistaking his destination now!
Um... for those who are interested here's the famous poem. My grandparents had an embroidered version of this stanza on their wall.
Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy,—
I was once a barefoot boy!
Well there was nothing for it so I listlessly stood up and slowly began to make my way to the table. I felt so stupid! After every step I had to fight down the urge to go back to my seat again. Weeeell.... after a bit I noticed a gay guy eyeing the table from across the room and he got up and started walking toward it. I figured he was just strolling for the exercise but I quickened my step just the same. As soon as I did that he began to walk faster. Then I walked faster, then he walked faster. There was no mistaking his destination now! I ran for the table and so did he! We tore for the ratty old plastic table and he did a flying leap (I'm exaggerating here but not much) ahead of me and with a woosh of boney fingers he scooped up the puzzle before I could reach it! Aaaargh! It's painful to recall this! He gave me a smug, "So there!" look, and I had to watch while he sat down at the table and shaked the pieces out. Defeated and dejected I returned to my seat and endured two more hours of almost unbearable sensory deprivation.
So what did I learn? I learned that the humble jigsaw puzzle is a thing of beauty to those who are desperate enough to need it. I'd no sooner make fun of it than I'd make jokes about penicillin. Now I take puzzles seriously!
Um... for those who are interested here's the famous poem. My grandparents had an embroidered version of this stanza on their wall.
BAREFOOT BOY
by John Greenleaf Whittier
Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy,—
I was once a barefoot boy!
Story copyright 2007 by Eddie Fitzgerald
I love this story- reading it is just fine- but HOLY CRAP, watching you act it out is far better!!! Especially the part where you leap, and it, of course, being an interactive performance; the innocent bystanders(me) get hit by your uproarious spectacle. Bravo, Eddie, BRAVO!!!
ReplyDeleteKali: LOL! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHaahahahsikljfdhvn
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ReplyDeleteWhoa! This story about how you shouldn't underestimate jigsaw puzzles threw me two curves: 1) in the story (and in real life?) you never do any actual work on a puzzle, and 2) the real moral turns out to be: jigsaws are fine -- if you're desperate! Your anecdote doesn't end up where I expected it to, at all. ... Anyway, thanks for a charming yarn!
ReplyDeleteI think Bullwinkle did that poem once.
ReplyDeleteThe really sad part of this for me is that I've got to report for jury duty next month at the same place. Thanks for the warning. I think I'll blow my brains out instead.
Reporting for duty next Monday. On the upside, I have no problem drawing tired, bored, haggard, crazy , old knitting, drooling, gay jiggsaw puzzlers.
ReplyDeleteGreat story Eddie.
You would never joke about the first miracle antibiotic for the masses but Red Skelton once told this one:
ReplyDeleteWhaddya ya get the guy who has everything? Penicillin! Haw haw haw!
Red cracked himself up, as usual. He's dead, now.
Bwa! I too heeded the siren call of the tattered cardboard--one fall day in a Pasadena jury room 10 years ago. Same scenario, except no girls afraid I'd hit on them. I'm not much of a schmoozer anyway in those types of situations with total strangers.
ReplyDeleteBut at my jury duty, the puzzle table always had a couple of very normal, intelligent-looking types assiduously doing those stupid puzzles...so I started one too. Got quite a bit of satisfaction out of it(o boredom!). I even bought one to do at home some time, I'd been so engrossed in it.
And never touched it, of course.
LOL!! Funny story! However,
ReplyDeleteRubiks Cubes > Jigsaws
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ReplyDeleteI should add that at my last jury duty in downtown L.A. I did take a sketchbook and did some great sketches...well, not great drawings by any means, but looking at them now puts me right back into that smelly, loud, ugly, cavernous room and I can see all those people again perfectly.
ReplyDeleteOne steely-grey, impeccably suited Nancy Reagan type arrived by chauffeur, no less, in her town car; he handed her her latte from Starbucks as she exited the car. Did she ever have perma-bitchface!
And then there was the curious "grouping" effect where it seemed like every 3 or 4 women, total strangers on day one, were by day three BFF, exchanging numbers and raucously laughing and having a high old time.
This cheese stood alone-not at the puzzle table, but timorously borrowing some handsome guy's Wall Street Journal, walkiing to Phillipe's at lunch, and sketching. What a life.
But it's all worth it if you at least get called to the criminal/hardcore floor, and although I've never been actually polled(they call about 100 jurors at a time for the big murder cases), just sitting in the courtroom while the accused are there, all the lawyers arrayed and the judge looking stern is enough to make your heart race.
I guess I'm saying I actually like jury duty, with or without puzzles.
I served on a jury twice in L.A.- both of them simple drug busts that dragged on for way too long, and both of them ended in a hung jury. On the first one,one of the guys in the jury room , an unemployed writer, I presume, kept trying to turn the case into an episode of Matlock or something. "Whoa , Whoa ,Whoa, why are the police making us do their dirty work? Why are they forcing us to pass judgement on this guy? I think something's going on here, and the Man is just using us, like, his pawns, man." We spent days inspecting every piece of evidence taken from the crack house,"I want to see the rifle" "He didn't even use the frickin' rifle, they caught him climbing out the back window" "So if they had weapons, man, why didn't they try to shoot it out with the cops?I think the cops planted everything here, man" For days this went on. The second hung jury on which I wasted my time, a woman jurist stated up front "I'm not finding him guilty, 'cause I don't think smoking crack is all that bad. I've done it, and I'm O.K." Sometime I wonder if there have been any jury cases in L.A. that ended with another murder being committed in the jury room.
ReplyDelete...if I could go there and meet Eddie or Vince or Jenny, now that would be worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteThat's what you get when you let the gays get the upper hand. Give 'em an inch...
ReplyDeleteSomeone should video you, Eddie, Telling a story. Your charisma is legendary, please share it with us! "Theory Corner TV!"
Paris Hilton ihas been grossly misrepresented by the media, she has had an upbringing of privelige and is of a class we are not fit to criticize, her family owns the HILTON HOTEL CHAIN people!!!
ReplyDeleteThe fact that we can send members of the aristocracy to prison for minor offenses while rappers remain free makes me yearn for simpler times
Lester: Spoken like a philosopher! Hey, I'm still thinking about your review of Catch 22. Let us know if you come up with any other gems like that!
ReplyDeleteIDRC, Vincent: Some advice! Make sure your laptop, Ipod and/or Gameboy are in good order. Your sanity depends on it! If you don't have one of those be sure to snatch up a puzzle when you come in and don't sit next to anyone who knits.
Bring both a book on tape and a real book, even though you probably won't get to them. The humming fluorescents make serious reading and thinking impossible! Bring a National Inquirer! Bring an egg salad sanwich and something that takes a long time to eat like beef jerkey! Bring something to help you start conversations with other people! Expect excrutiating pain!
Jenny: Actually being on a jury is fun. It's the waiting that's painful!
The experience of being on two juries has really made a patriot of me. The system, or what you can see of it in a courtroom, really does try to be fair!
JohnA: Good point! I think the rule shold be that 10 out of 12 people in agreement should be enough to convict. There's bound to be one person in twelve who's just plain addled and wouldn't convict regardless of the evidence.
"Hey, I'm still thinking about your review of Catch 22. Let us know if you come up with any other gems like that!"
ReplyDeleteYou might find this post about my car interesting.
Lester: A terrific meditation on the 57 Imperial! If only we made cars with that kind of flamboyance now!
ReplyDeleteThe dashboard and steering wheel are just as impressive as the exterior. A combination of feminine color with highly masculine space-age design. Breathtaking!