The Puzzle

This is the tale of a harassed father of an eight year old who wished desperately to fill out his income tax form, but who had also been assigned the double duty of baby-sitting. After the child had interrupted the father several times, the young father thumbed through a magazine and found an interesting map of the world. You see, the father was very much child development centered, and most understanding of his child's need for purposeful activity in substituting for daddy's attention. Well, he cut out the map into jigsaw-type pieces and gave them to his child.

This certainly ought to give him a chance to complete Forms B and C, he felt, and he returned to his work with a self-satisfied, virtuous feeling of "it's all in knowing how."

Just imagine his surprise when the child bounded back into the study a scant five minutes later and announced that the puzzle was completed. The astounded father didn't know whether to be distressed at the child's lack of integrity, or impressed because his offspring was a budding genius.

Unbelievably, the father went to look at the puzzle and saw it was completed. "How did you work this puzzle so quickly?" he asked.

The child replied, "The world was so hard to figure out that I turned the pieces over. I saw that on the back there was a picture of a child. I started to put the child together instead because I figured that if I put the child together right, the world would come out right, too."