My wife, Melinda, loves to put puzzles together, and to be quite honest with you, I hate them! Until she gets about half way through with it and then I get very interested in her puzzle. You see when my sweet wifey starts a puzzle, it becomes an all consuming mind numbing addiction to her, and she prefers to conquer her addictions by assembling them in our living room, right on the table that beckons me to place my ice cold beverage on top of when I get home after a hard days work. I then find myself drawn into her little snare and become trapped like a fly on a web that has been strategically placed where knowingly the innocent fly will be drawn to. It is in those few moments of intense struggle that I covertly REMOVE just one unsuspecting, innocent, insignificant, unnoticeable little piece of the puzzle. There, I said it, the secret is out, the cat is out of the bag, the truth has been told, the beans are spilled!

Its a little game that I like to play called “where is the last piece?” Now before you get all upset with me, you know you’ve done the very same thing, to your brother, sister, mom or dad…. maybe it wasn’t a puzzle piece, maybe it was the last piece of pizza and you heard your little brother cry out as you shoved it in, “gimmie what’s due me!” Or maybe it was the last piece of chocolate or the last twinkie, I’m sure I’m not alone on this “last piece” game we play am I? I have however noticed there is a flaw in this game I like to play with Melinda’s puzzles, and that is I’m very forgetful. The way it works is like this: She works very hard for several days to complete her puzzle, I remove one piece of the puzzle and put it in my pocket or on a bookshelf, or in my office, or in the fridge, or in the cup holder in the expedition, or about a million other places and then when she realizes that there is one piece missing she comes looking for it.

I hate to admit it, but we have several puzzles at our house that have been put on a shelf up in the closet in hopes that one day we’ll find that missing piece. They don’t get the attention that some of the other ones do anymore. Sadly, also down through the years we have had several puzzles that we have just had to say farewell to because there were just too many pieces that had gotten misplaced.

I encourage you to guard ALL of the pieces of your puzzle, and watch out for those who would take from you even one small piece.