From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst
15 February
Little Johnny Stories VI
By the time my son Johnny turned 6 he looked like he was
actually maturing. Somehow he had become a hard worker. He could be, and
sometime was, remarkably focused, to the point where he wouldn’t take no for an
answer, but probably like all 6-year-olds he could be a little impatient
especially when he got tired. [Know anybody like that?]
Anyway, during what might be called his jigsaw puzzle phase
I bought him a 75-piece Donald Duck puzzle. He really liked doing puzzles, but
75 pieces probably represented a greater challenge than he could handle at that
age. It was certainly more complicated than anything he had ever tried up to
that point.
He made a promising beginning. He had learned to turn all
the pieces face up, then to separate them so no part of a piece was covered by
another piece. Then he connected all the edge pieces, then Donald, then the
buildings and the people in the background, then the grass. Eventually all he
had left was maybe 20 pieces that represented the blue sky – a remarkably
uniform blue sky. I remember he looked like he was getting tired, and a little
crabby – eventually he took a blue piece that almost fit the space he chose,
and when that piece didn’t quite slide into place, he encouraged it into place
with a pounding fist.
Eventually he found that he had a relatively small number of
those blue pieces left over and just a few spaces for them to fit into, but no
matter how he adjusted here and rearranged there, for some reason none of those
remaining pieces would fit in any of the spaces.
The moral of the story: it takes more than a can-do attitude
and determination to get the job done. Sometimes it takes a little patience,
and the capacity to walk away from a quick fix that doesn’t, like, fix.
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