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IT'S ALL JUST ONE
BIG PUZZLE |
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I had to call my daughter, and I didn't have my iPhone with
me. Like the relic I am, I had to use our landline, which meant I had to
remember her phone number, because there was no speed dial.
I froze, my fingers all ready to push the little numbers,
except that my mind was a blank.
"This is awful," I cried to my wife, who was nearby
and is seldom sympathetic to my ailments. "I'm losing my mind. I've
forgotten my own daughter's phone number."
She knows as well as anyone that remembering phone numbers
has always been one of my greatest strengths. It's probably the main
reason she married me.
Naturally, she was concerned, but had trouble showing it. It
wasn't the first time that she had noticed my dullness setting in. She
could pinpoint when it began---about a week after we got married, 44 years
ago.
"Stop watching so much sports on television," she
replied as she worked on her third crossword puzzle of the day.
"You're going brain-dead."
Maybe she was right. She charitably rattled off my daughter's
phone number, right off the top of her head. And then she went right back
to concentrating on her crossword puzzle.
Crossword puzzles. That was the answer. She could never
remember phone numbers before. I was the king of phone numbers. It had to
be the crossword puzzles, which she started doing a few years ago.
"That's it," I announced. "I'm saving my
brain. Instead of zoning out watching basketball, I'm going to start doing
crossword puzzles, just like you."
She looked up and slipped her snotty little reading glasses
down to the end of her nose. "Good luck."
I grabbed the paper and turned to the NY Times puzzle, which
looked simple enough. I knew the drill. Go down the list and enter
the answers that are obvious to any knucklehead and then roll from there.
I found two, and they were both sports questions. Worst
of all, the answers were both only three letters each.
My brain was not happy. In fact, it was a little embarrassed
by how much it did not know. It had no idea who was a "noted
1970's-80's gang leader" nor did it have any clue what a 10 letter
word with an "L" in the middle (thanks to my sports answer) was
for "yen or yuan."
I guessed on a few others, and was probably wrong, which
would really screw me up. I turned to my wife, who was entering answers on
her crossword puzzle with reckless abandon. "I'm the dumbest person
in the world," I announced.
She took pity on me, for once. "It's easier on Mondays.
They get more difficult as the week goes on. Friday puzzles are
tough. And the NY Times puzzles are never easy."
I was exhausted from racking my brain to come up with
answers. But I could feel the blood flowing again. I tested myself by
trying to remember the phone number of my sister in San Diego. It came to
me right away. I was back.
No more sports on television for me. I was determined to
become a crossword puzzle wizard, just like my wife. But first I needed to
do a little research, just to make sure. So I Googled "Do crossword
puzzles make you smarter?"
Psychology Today had the best answer: "If you do a lot
of crossword puzzles, you might get really good at crossword puzzles. But
the affects do not elevate critical frontal lobe brain functions such as
decision-making, planning and judgment---functions that allow us to carry
out our daily lives."
That was enough for me. My crossword puzzle career was over
before it started. Why torture myself with crossword puzzles if the only
benefit is to get better at torturing myself?
Besides, the Golden State Warriors were on television at that
particular moment and needed my help. Curry was floating some passes,
Durant was bogged down in isolation sequences, and Cousins was having
trouble defending the pick and roll. My brain was in stimulation mode.
"I thought you were going to work on crosswords,"
said my wife as she looked up and saw me watching sports again.
"You've got your talents, I've got mine," I
replied. "You figure out 41-across and I'll figure out how to defend
LeBron James."
Neither one of us is likely to get any smarter, but at least
we're doing what we enjoy. |
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