Ever since I was a kid, I've liked playing with Legos. I probably spent countless hours of my youth building, tearing apart, and re-building all sorts of cars, airplanes, and spaceships (none of this pansy house-building for me). I still have a bucket of them sitting in my room, and every time I break them out, I get a little nostalgic. Besides, it's just plain fun for my inner tinkerer/geek.
Technically, these are children's toys. You don't want babies near them, because they might swallow the pieces; children of about three years old, though, can usually handle the whole concept. And coincidentally, there just so happen to be kids of that age floating around my house at times. Most of the time, I just help them build stuff that they're working on. Sometimes they still have trouble with snapping together pieces, so I help with that. Other times, they don't understand how gravity works, so I help to provide structural support to their constructs. And then, there are the times when it gets really, really fun.
A little while ago, a 4 year old was over at our house, and we played with the Legos. She put together a small but clever spaceship; it used the axle of what was supposed to be a pair of wheels as the main fuselage. I'd never once thought to do this, so I told her it was clever. Her response? "You build one, too."
Okay, so I started building one the same way she did. Unprompted, she then decided that it was going to be competition about who could build the best rocket. She had come to my house, played with my Legos, and she was challenging me to a duel with one of my favorite toys? I don't care if I've got twenty-plus years on the kid, game on (playing along can be ridiculous amounts of fun sometimes).
I spent the next five minutes or so building a superior rocket ship. It had bells & whistles, it had frickin' tail fins, and it just plain looked awesome. Now, this little girl is smart. She was self-aware enough to know when she was losing, even though I hadn't said a word through the process. Seeing that she was slightly behind in technical competence, she went a different route: she went for creative & funny. There was a random stroller piece (from a left-over house set we got once), so she hung it off of the tip of her rocket, proclaimed hers to be funnier, laughed, and then declared victory. She cheats, I tell you.
Of course, that was nothing compared to the time I went two-on-one against a pair of brothers in a (Lego) gun-building competition. It started out the same way; they were building stuff, and I picked up a few pieces to help. They were working on their own gun, so I built a different one with other spare parts. At that point, they decided they liked mine better, so they appropriated it and proceeded to fake-shoot me with the stolen gun.
Well, I needed protection, so I built yet another gun out of the remaining pieces. That apparently signaled a challenge, so a Lego version of the Cold War broke out in my living room. They kept taking the pieces, too, so I had to get creative. At one point, I remember building two very, very simple handgun-looking things, but making it so that I could interlock the two. Essentially, I could make the second one look like the scope for the first one simply by stacking them on each other. That blew their minds and won me a few points (I consider those the Reagan years).
We went toe-to-toe for a few rounds of this, and it was ridiculous amounts of fun. I'm not going to declare a winner, but let's just say that *my* creations kept getting taken and used against me (stupid Afghanistan). Of course, just like the real Cold War, we eventually ran out of pieces and had to disarm ourselves to a certain extent.
Unlike the real Cold War, though, we then decided to work together on building something super awesome. These were the really big Legos meant for younger children, so we put a whole bunch of them together to make a bazooka. Not just any bazooka, but one that a three year old could actually carry around on his shoulder. Of course, once it was built, they then proceeded to do exactly that. Of all of the things I have managed to build in my Lego-playing years, that is probably the crowning jewel. In fact, everyone was so happy with the outcome, we took pictures of the darn thing (kid included).
I think I may have to purchase even more Legos. That bucket sitting in my room looks a little small, all of a sudden.
Technically, these are children's toys. You don't want babies near them, because they might swallow the pieces; children of about three years old, though, can usually handle the whole concept. And coincidentally, there just so happen to be kids of that age floating around my house at times. Most of the time, I just help them build stuff that they're working on. Sometimes they still have trouble with snapping together pieces, so I help with that. Other times, they don't understand how gravity works, so I help to provide structural support to their constructs. And then, there are the times when it gets really, really fun.
A little while ago, a 4 year old was over at our house, and we played with the Legos. She put together a small but clever spaceship; it used the axle of what was supposed to be a pair of wheels as the main fuselage. I'd never once thought to do this, so I told her it was clever. Her response? "You build one, too."
Okay, so I started building one the same way she did. Unprompted, she then decided that it was going to be competition about who could build the best rocket. She had come to my house, played with my Legos, and she was challenging me to a duel with one of my favorite toys? I don't care if I've got twenty-plus years on the kid, game on (playing along can be ridiculous amounts of fun sometimes).
I spent the next five minutes or so building a superior rocket ship. It had bells & whistles, it had frickin' tail fins, and it just plain looked awesome. Now, this little girl is smart. She was self-aware enough to know when she was losing, even though I hadn't said a word through the process. Seeing that she was slightly behind in technical competence, she went a different route: she went for creative & funny. There was a random stroller piece (from a left-over house set we got once), so she hung it off of the tip of her rocket, proclaimed hers to be funnier, laughed, and then declared victory. She cheats, I tell you.
Of course, that was nothing compared to the time I went two-on-one against a pair of brothers in a (Lego) gun-building competition. It started out the same way; they were building stuff, and I picked up a few pieces to help. They were working on their own gun, so I built a different one with other spare parts. At that point, they decided they liked mine better, so they appropriated it and proceeded to fake-shoot me with the stolen gun.
Well, I needed protection, so I built yet another gun out of the remaining pieces. That apparently signaled a challenge, so a Lego version of the Cold War broke out in my living room. They kept taking the pieces, too, so I had to get creative. At one point, I remember building two very, very simple handgun-looking things, but making it so that I could interlock the two. Essentially, I could make the second one look like the scope for the first one simply by stacking them on each other. That blew their minds and won me a few points (I consider those the Reagan years).
We went toe-to-toe for a few rounds of this, and it was ridiculous amounts of fun. I'm not going to declare a winner, but let's just say that *my* creations kept getting taken and used against me (stupid Afghanistan). Of course, just like the real Cold War, we eventually ran out of pieces and had to disarm ourselves to a certain extent.
Unlike the real Cold War, though, we then decided to work together on building something super awesome. These were the really big Legos meant for younger children, so we put a whole bunch of them together to make a bazooka. Not just any bazooka, but one that a three year old could actually carry around on his shoulder. Of course, once it was built, they then proceeded to do exactly that. Of all of the things I have managed to build in my Lego-playing years, that is probably the crowning jewel. In fact, everyone was so happy with the outcome, we took pictures of the darn thing (kid included).
I think I may have to purchase even more Legos. That bucket sitting in my room looks a little small, all of a sudden.
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