Well, we’re almost at the end of January and my parents’ New Year resolution to pull me and the PB out of the digital world and into the ‘real’ world continues. I thought everyone was supposed to quit on their New Year resolutions by the end of January and revert to their old, comfortable ways. But no, trust my parents to decide that this is the resolution they’re going to see through, no matter what. Their diet and exercise plans, of course, got cancelled on January 2, but torturing the kids is something they seem to have no trouble sticking to.
When I asked them if less screen time, more real-world time meant I could quit online school and be home-schooled, they said no. They said it was in the fine print of the non-existent contract that I never signed. UGH.
Anyway, this week, we received a package from Amazon, and I was super excited. I thought the folks had given into my months of begging and pleading for Call of Duty and finally gotten it for me, but I should have known better.
It was… wait for it… a jigsaw puzzle.
I mean. Come on. A jigsaw puzzle? What are we, five? What self-respecting tweenager does a jigsaw puzzle? Can you imagine what it would do to my rep as a seriously cool person, if the news that I did jigsaw puzzles got out?
It was a puzzle of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which Einstein PB thought was the Qutb Minar. Wow, I definitely wasn’t this stupid when I was his age. Kids!
Exhausting
Puzzles are not easy, people. These are not the jigsaws of pre-school where you had to slot the wooden pig into the right slot in the farm scene. It was like a thousand-piece puzzle! 1,000! Tiny, weirdly cut pieces of the monument with about 500 pieces of just the blue sky.
I think we spent like an hour just flipping all the pieces over to see what they were. Then we sorted them out by colour. And then, I was so exhausted, I had to take a nap. What? Tweens need sleep, okay?
We decided to split up and tackle each part of the puzzle and then try to assemble it. I saw the PB try to swipe and double-tap the pieces a couple of times to try and put them together. Maybe he does need to less screen time.
We started making the puzzle on Friday evening and, by Sunday night, we were done. Sure, we didn’t work on it non-stop, but we kept coming to it when we were bored or passed by the dining table where we were working on it.
By Sunday 9:30 p.m., it was almost done. Just one piece to go. We were so excited.
Till we realised that the final piece was missing, we couldn’t find it anywhere.
Till we saw a teeny tiny piece of sky… hanging out of Woody’s mouth.
Welcome to the real world, I guess.
