Digressions: My Life in 500 Words or Less

Growing up, I had no real awareness of our family’s economic status. Maybe it’s supposed to be that way.

Kids should be allowed to be kids without the burden of grown-up worries. Adulthood comes along soon enough.

It’s funny how the mind works. It reasons, deduces, stores and shields for any number of reasons, in any numbers of ways. And, in many cases, the mind allows emotions to attach to the information it holds.

In the late ‘60s I was one of a family of eight living in a single-paycheck household. It had to have been hard for my parents, but they did not let on.

Though not always the case, hand-me-down clothes and off-brand games were not uncommon. Occasionally, a few things were homemade.

Last fall, as several of us siblings sorted through belongings at the family home, someone came across a set of four painted wood blocks. Each side of each of the four blocks is one of four different colors: blue, green, red or yellow. And each block has a different configuration of the four colors. For example, one block might have three red sides, one blue, one yellow and one green while another might have two blue and two green sides and one side each of red and yellow.

It was Dad’s homemade version of a toy called Instant Insanity, a puzzle in which the goal is to stack blocks so the four vertical rows display all four colors. He made the toy after seeing a miniature version we got in a box of cereal, Honeycomb, if I remember correctly.

Somewhere I still have the original plastic miniature blocks. I remember playing with it until I could solve the puzzle relatively quickly.

Dad always liked puzzles, so it was no surprise he took an interest in Instant Insanity. He created the blocks purportedly so my siblings and I could have a toy to occupy our time, but I vaguely remember him playing with it, too.

Last fall when we found Dad’s homemade toy, I remember a wave of nostalgia sweeping over me. For a few seconds, I was back at the kitchen table of our home in Muldraugh, eating cereal in the late ’60s. For a few seconds, my family again was complete, my parents still alive.

I have that set of homemade Instant Insanity blocks now. Some paint has worn off, but most of it is still there. It took me 20 or 30 minutes, but I solved it again. Handling those blocks made me nostalgic, made me smile and made me a little sad. It made me think of what I didn’t know then. It made me think about what I don’t know now.

It’s funny how the mind works, how it allows emotion to attach to memory. Try as I may, I can’t stack my thoughts to prevent it.

That’s one puzzle I’ll probably never solve.