Puzzle Me This

I have a puzzle problem. There.  I’ve admitted it. Just like an alcoholic and booze, I need to stay away from puzzles.

And I recently fell off the wagon.  Years ago I missed an entire Thanksgiving because I was absorbed in a zillion-piece jigsaw puzzle in a three-day binge.  I have forbidden my family and friends ever to give me another jigsaw puzzle.

But none of us knew about cryptograms.  I was recently on a flight home to Sacramento, and a woman came down the aisle carrying a little magazine that said, “Cryptograms.”  Wouldn’t you know she’d sit right beside me?

I watched her open the pages.  Hmm… some kind of word decoding game.  I waited as long as I could stand it—approximately seven seconds—and then asked her what it was.

And she couldn’t have been nicer.  Not only did she explain it to me, she even let me look over her shoulder and suggest letters.  Fast forward twenty minutes and now you see me working feverishly on my fold-down lap table, with her book and her pen, while she sits beside me reading a novel. I had completely usurped her puzzle book and was compulsively solving the phrases as if this were an SAT exam and my entire future depended on it.

Had my kids been there, they would have been nudging one another and whispering.  “Look at mom.  She’s doing it again,” just like they used to call to their father when I would take over their homework.

Shameful.  That’s the only word for what I did and I am as guilty as a dog with whipped cream on its face, an empty pie tin beside him.  If there were a Puzzles Anonymous group, I would sign right up. 

But I have a feeling I’d sit in back and download apps recommended to me by other attendees.

No guilt needed for clicking here to buy my books or subscribe to my YouTube Mom videos.  In fact, it will do you a world of good.  You’re welcome.