Crazy about numbers
SUDOKU - nine squares, 81 numbers. Do not you know? Then keep your fingers away! It threatens risks and side effects. The number puzzle can be addictive. If not you, then maybe your husband. I know what I'm talking about.
After 20 years together, I thought I knew the quirks and quirks of my husband. In any case, excessive guessing was not one of them. Then a nice day on our sailboat. My husband read, I solved a sudoku. I must say at this point: It was not my first, half a dozen I had probably already made. Driven by a mixture of pride and pomposity, I wagged my husband in front of his nose.
"Look, do you know that?"
"Nope."
"It's great fun."
"Aha."
"Try it, I have more."
"Maybe later."
TRY THIS TIME - three words, four syllables. Unimagined consequences. He then tried it - and we spent the rest of the holiday more with sudoku than with sailing. I stayed relatively relaxed, but my husband was really hooked. He dug in so well, all the more as he initially got tangled up in the numbers. We suddenly did not care about sailing anywhere for hours. We bought newspapers and puzzles, lolled around on our ship, and found the holiday more relaxing than ever.
Then everyday life had us again. My enthusiasm for sudokus subsided abruptly. Not so with my husband.
That's two and a half years ago. Or about 5500 Sudokus - in his view. He was constantly increasing. And since he works less, he likes to cut eight of them a day. When I come home in the evening, I find her in the old paper - carefully filled squares on newspaper pages and slips, silent witnesses of his diligent actions.
He works fast, jagged, zigzag, zack, and to 99 percent he gets the solution out. Then he proudly holds out the note to me: Look, everything was done right.
He could also solve the puzzles right on the computer, click, click, click. Did he try, he finds unpractical. Just like magazines. He prefers downloading sudokus from the net and printing them out. He is flexible with loose slips. He can fold it and put it in the jacket for on the way. And distribute them in the apartment: on the kitchen table, the living room table, next to the bed, in the bathroom - plus pen. Always ready. That's how it looks like in the meantime.
I have to say that the full extent has only gradually become clear to me. At first, I was worried when my husband did not come for hours from the loo and it was so scary quiet behind the door. After all, he is over 60, so you have to expect the utmost. Now I enjoy the almost creative silence in our four walls. In the past, he often hung in front of the telly.
He has to "work away" Sudokus.
For longer car rides he likes to leave the wheel for me, he still has a lot to do away with. Luckily, it does not bother me when driving in the dark when the interior light is on for a long time.
He used to avoid visits to the doctor where possible. This Rumhockerei, corrosive. The other day he came back relaxed from the precaution. "Do you remember how I always got annoyed when I had to wait? Today I felt way too fast." Believe it or not, the doctor had to wait until the sudoku was done. Who is in this mood, can not be sick - or is it?
DO I MISS WHAT? Am I feeling neglected? Nope. Okay, earlier he used to call me in the office more often. But I have a good-humored man who knows how to deal with and only rarely scolds ("Shit, because I've made a mistake somewhere" - crunch-and-away).
You can not really say that he is lonely. Sudoku connects is almost global. Last April, on our city break in Valencia. In the warm spring sun people sat, ate, drank, carved. Suddenly my husband marched toward one of the tables. There was an old man in worn out clothes. Huh, what does he want from that? Watch over his shoulder, what else, the man made sudoku. What can I say? The two were immediately sympathetic to each other. The man offered us seats and ordered wine and tapas. He was an architecture professor, and we learned some interesting facts about the sights of the city. It was a super nice afternoon. "You see," said my husband, "without me you would NEVER ...". He is right.
