Beginnings

According to family members, I apparently started putting together jigsaw puzzles when I was around three or so years old.  I obviously have no memory of this but, but I have heard the story about my mom and I doing a puzzle, and I was holding and piece, looking for where it belonged.  My mom kept telling me "higher, higher", and I lifted my arm above my head and gave her a wry smile.

My early puzzles were all easy, 100-300 piece fare, like Spider-Man, Disney, Looney Tunes, He-Man, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

     

We had a couple of more difficult ones, like Dracula and Star Wars, that I'm pretty sure I at least attempted, though I doubt I ever finished.  I also distinctly remember an Alien puzzle that was of the Space Jockey that I found a little scary.

I spent the majority of the next 30 odd years not really doing any puzzles at all, and if I did, it was dusting these old ones off for nostalgia's sake.  I had one flirtation with a 3000 piece puzzle of Sistine Chapel ceiling, but I soon realized that I was both unable to fit the puzzle on my coffee table, and lacked the patience and experience to put tackle such a difficult puzzle.

A few years after the Sistine Chapel debacle, I decided to purchase a puzzle on a whim at my local Goodwill.  I could not have realized what I had started...