Lost Piece

I had decided to move out of my mother's basement months ago. I'm 32, it's time. But I'd been procrastinating and had not taken the next step of actually looking for an apartment. One day walking with Brie and I caught sight of the bright red awning of the Granville Island Toy Store new Main Street location.

One word flashed in my brain: PUZZLES!

I walked into the store, pulling Brie behind me, and immediately spied a room-full of puzzles off to the left. This was the exact moment that I decided to seriously start looking for an apartment.

To celebrate my epiphany, I bought a Ravensburger 1000-piece mind-fucker depicting some medieval scene of a flaxen-haired maiden playing the harp amidst grey-green background and tiny little flowers. Hours and hours of solitary nerdiness awaited me.

Last weekend, I cracked that sucker open and set to work on it. Hours passed in what seemed like minutes. I managed to knock out the borders and started making piles differentiated by shades of yellow or green.

In the background, I had Supernatural: Season 2 playing for noise. I got up to change the disc and was momentarily distracted by my two favorite boys, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles. I manipulated the menu to the "Play All" feature. Walking backwards, drooling, I sat down absentmindedly only to catch the corner of the box sending my puzzle-piece piles all over my green blanket. OHHHHHH SHHHHIIIIIIIIIT!

Momentarily paralyzed by the weight of what I'd just done...or undone, I stood mouth-agape and cursing. What can I do? How can I make sure to found all the pieces!? There are ONE THOUSAND of them, for chrissakes!

I took a deep breath and started to carefully picked up the pieces and place them back into the box. I shook out the blanket and felt confident I'd gotten them all. I began reassembling my piles and then I had to pee.

I went to the washroom, humming to myself, happy to have escaped a near-disaster. I finished my business and stood up to flush. As I pushed down the lever, I noticed something floating in the bowl. That's weird, I thought to myself. I didn't #2, nor do I #2 in square shapes.

Then as the water started to fill and swirl around the bowl I realized that it was once of my beloved puzzle pieces dancing playfully in the water below. It had somehow managed to find its way into my pants was now about to be lost to me forever. Dizzying thoughts raced through my mind: I would never ever be able to complete the picture. I would never gaze upon my finished masterpiece. I will live forever unsated.

Dread washed over me and I plunged my hand into the yellow whirlpool digging feverishly for the puzzle piece. It was like trying to fish an eggshell out of eggwhite. I wrapped my fingers around the corner of the piece only to have it slip through and disappear into the unknown.

I tried to comfort myself by thinking that it was lost once the first drop of pee trespassed the pourous cardboard. Having degraded it in such a way, it was unrecoverable even before I had realized it was missing.

I set about washing my hands OCD-style. Defeated, dejected and depressed, I wandered back to the table to look at the puzzle that would never be. Just fragments of coloured paper mocking me at every turn.

Today it sits, unfinished still. My desire to put it together waning. I look at it much like a disappointed parent perusing their child's D-laden report card. I won't be able to go back to it until the sting has subsided. For know it's serving as a coaster or a placemat...any number of things except that which it was born to be...the last milestone that would mark the end of my time in my mother's basement.