Lego Land
I’m not a creative person.
I’m not saying that to elicit sympathy or fish for the occasional, “there, there, Aunt Becky, you’re SO creative,” because I know it’s a hot pile of bullshit. I’m not creative.
Take, for example, the time in high school that I took a drawing class as an elective. I sat there, my beret perched neatly atop my head, all, “Imma be an ARTIST,” until I had to actually draw my first picture. A still life of a bowl of grapes looked more like a pile of testicles hovering over a tire than actual fruit. It took a few weeks, but after I realized I had no artistic aptitude, I simply copied the work of someone much more talented sitting next to me – the first and only time I ever cheated in a class.
My desire to be a creative genius, a veritable child prodigy, went back a lot further than that, though.
We always had Lego sets lying around when I was a kid. My brother, the actual creative one in the family and a full ten years my senior, was able to build these amazing creations from a bin of random Lego bits. I figured I could do the same. It couldn’t be THAT hard, right?
Heh.
One Saturday, as I watched the morning cartoons, I decided to prove to the world – and my family – that my mug belonged squarely on the cover of Time Magazine as the “World’s Most Awesomest Kid” (alternately, “The World’s Best Genius.”) – I wasn’t sure which would be more effective.
I schlepped down to the basement in my footie pajamas, careful to avoid slipping down the stairs, on my quest for the basket of Legos. Tucked away in the corner, right behind the antique butter churn and some ancient copies of the New Yorker, I found it.
I brushed off the dust (my brother had long-since traded Legos for sports cars) and lugged the basket up the stairs. I plopped it in front of the television, marveling at all the ways I could make super awesome stuffs. Like a pirate ship. Or a pony on roller skates.
After, of course, I cleaned the cat pee off the Legos.
I sat there, in front of Jem and the Holographs and started trying to put something together out of the random bits of Lego. Hrms. I couldn’t create a pony – no horse head. Roller skates required wheels, which I didn’t have either. And a pirate ship? Well, not so much.
But I tried.
And after about an hour of blood, sweat, tears and Legos, I looked down at my masterpiece. It was a square box. With one window – no door. Even the house I tried to make looked all janked up. Who the fuck can’t make a house?
Me. I couldn’t.
I sighed deeply. Clearly my “muse” was a lying fucking bitch. Ever since, I’ve eschewed anything Lego-related.
That is, of course, I had children.
My eldest, who has autism, loves Legos. There’s something innately soothing to him about lining up all the wee parts, following directions, and creating something grand. That is, of course, until a piece goes missing. With two smaller siblings and a mess of cats, that’s pretty much all the time. Shit, I STILL can’t find my whore pants, which are, needless to say, much larger than a piece of Lego.
Once a piece is lost, the set is “ruined” and he refuses to play with it.
I’d mostly banished Legos from my house until The Guy On My Couch moved in – there’s too much pressure to make sure the sets are in pristine condition for me to actively buy Legos for my kid.
The Guy On My Couch, he loves Legos. I know, you’re probably all, “so, he’s an overgrown teenager, right?” to which I would reply, “yes, but he also cooks.”
I find his obsession with Legos more endearing than not – one look at my orchid collection and you’d know that he’s not the only one in the house with collecting issues.
He’s been carefully assembling Hogwarts Lego sets and putting the completed pieces in my china cabinet (I will soon have to find a new place to store my china and Cock Soup packets), which has sparked the Lego bug deep within my children. Apparently a love of Legos is created by osmosis. And I get it – the finished kits are pretty fucking cute.
I wouldn’t mind living in Lego Land so much if I hadn’t stepped on approximately 800 Lego pieces in the last week.
Those motherfuckers hurt.
Oh my gosh, seriously the best post I’ve read in weeks. lol…
Ouch! They do hurt! But the kids love them! I love the idea of putting their creations in the china cabinet–I’m so going to suggest that to my son!
I have a friend that works at Legoland. He makes $125k a year to come up with original and creative Lego sculptures. If he designs *FIVE* in a year, he’s a genius.
If you have lego-lovers in the family, go with it. You can make money doing the strangest things…
YOU SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH WHEN I’M BUILDING MAH HAOGWARTS!
You got your orchids to bloom?!? How’d you do that???
And yeah, my son loves the lego. LOVES THE LEGO.
I loved legos but was never good at it. But I didn’t have any brothers (just a sis who didnt care about them), so since there was no one to compare myself to, I didn’t have any self esteem issues surrounding them.
I once spent an entire evening building a Lego Bat-Cave with my friend’s young son. That was a couple years ago and I’m still his hero – or is that, HER hero? But I can’t do squat without the directions. I follow directions really really well!
…but our family was more Lincoln Log-y, I think.
Who cares about legos when you can grow orchids? Wow.
Dude – Jem and the HoloGRAMS, not Holographs 🙂 Also, you can watch that show on The Hub channel. Found it by accident one afternoon while the kids were napping. Damn is that show terrible.
Also, stepping on a Lego is PAINFUL. Though I am married to a guy who still occasionally plays D&D. Stepping on a 4 sided die is HORRIBLE
I hope the guy on the couch steps on a lego, even if i do luff him to pieces.
You can buy individual lego pieces to replace the ones that are lost
http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Pick-A-Brick-ByTheme
Oh my god why does stepping on a Lego hurt so much? It really does. I remember that so many times as a kid.
I always wish I could have children but I’m not sure I will be able to. This makes me sad on many levels especially because I want to be able to play with toys!!
I’m not creative either. That’s pretty much what I want to be more than anything, but I’m not. I’m a developer. I take an idea I have already seen and run with it.
So, this post got me thinking, as I am currently compiling a list of toys that everyone else seems to love, cherish, collect, shalac, put up on shelves, stand in long fucking holiday lines to wait for…it got me thinking maybe YOU won’t be mad at me when I post my toy-hating post, which is still in draft. I hate them for your aforementioned reasons, too, but what I hate MOST about them is this: what the fuck good are they, really? You put these intricate sets together and then, what, LOOK AT IT?? My kids cannot grasp that concept. I mean, I don’t blame them, those little fuckers with hard hats and briefcases and flowers in vases and lifejackets on are PRETTY DAMN COOL..so, naturally, you know…they PLAY with their lego creations. For about TWO FUCKING SECONDS. and then, well, you know…one wrong tip of the hard hat and THAT’S IT. IT’S JUST OVER. legos smashed, falling, crumbling.
All three of my children have different ways of venting their frustrations over this, none of which I find acceptable and all of which involve a form of FIT-PITCHING. So, I agree, THOSE LEGOS CAN GO FUCK THEMSELVES.
I always used to play with my Lego sets when I was a kid. I had some really cool sets, and building them was just the start of the fun. But my daughter only builds them and takes them apart as soon as they’re done. Drives me up the fucking wall!!
My son is crazy brilliant with Legos. He built me the most incredible house when he was 7, then my other half broke it. I figured, well the foundation is still there, I’ll just figure it out. SIX HOURS and FOUR tantrums later I managed to put the house back together. The house that that took him an hour and had windows, doors, fucking turrets. He just built me a replica of K9 (Doctor Who) from legos and if anyone breaks that, I’m going to be in jail. I can’t even buy him the sets anymore because he puts them together too quickly. If I had 1000 bucks to get that Death Star set that the box claims you have to be 16 to put together (he’s 13) I would just to see how fast he can do it. He’s not too keen on the sets though, he always winds up modifying them.
I used to hate when the pieces would stick other. Those bastards ruined my nails.
I loved loved loved Lego as a kid, and my nephews do now… and there are such creative ideas out there in Legoland, from Harry Potter to Star Wars to a whole bunch of stuff that I did not know what the hell it was.
As a kid I was not creative with Lego at all, or with other stuff… to stare at the pile of stuff and wait for an idea to come was torture. Thats why I liked puzzles more, cuz the end result was present in the picture on the box. And because yes that piece of Lego hurt like hell when you stepped on it…
You know what else hurts like hell? God damned Barbie shoes!
My son is 20 and I still step on his freakin’ Lego’s. I wish that he would grow out of them already and move on to something more grown up like beer bottle caps or something.
I once tripped (over a bunch of toys, I am sure) and fell in the living room, landing on a duplo lego. It split the skin on my knee open. On another occasion I tripped over same duplo legos, with toddler in arms, and fell into a glass table, landing on top of said toddler. I still cannot believe he did break any bones. I, on the other hand, was in bad shape. Just a few weeks ago a tiny lego was taken up by the vacuum (so what if I did it on purpose), thus jamming the vacuum and burning a hole in the belt. Damned legos.
Umm, please explain to me what whore pants are? Are they pants that turn a woman into a whore? Are they pants stolen from a whore? Are they pants that with the crotch bit cut off?
I think my son Joey has a future in Logo design. And, if Hogwarts is going in the china cabinet, where is Beanis hanging out?
Legos, schmegos. Lincoln logs are where it’s at.
I hate Legos. Always did. Someone gave me a huge buicket for my son’s birthday, and 24 hours later I stepped on one, crashed into the table, and bruised myself. Stupid frikkin legos. Oh, and I can’t build them either. At all.