Oh no...more Legos

Well my oldest son celebrated his 8th birthday recently and as usual was showered with gifts and spoiled rotten, not so much by his mother and me, but the rest of the family is quite generous. Thank you all, I think. He received a wonderful trove of treasure, some games for his Nintendo DS, a skateboard (blogs to come), Harry Potter movies, clothes, tickets to a wonderful show called "Walking with Dinosaurs" (he loved), what a haul right? Sorry if you are reading and I skipped something you gave him, it's hard to keep track of everything with his birthday only a month after Christmas.

These gifts were all fabulous and he has played and used every last one of them, but there is the one can't miss gift for boys ranging in age from 4-12 years old, and that is Legos. Since my three boys all fall into this age range you can imagine what our house looks like, for those of you that have spent time at our house, you know exactly what I'm talking about. They are everywhere, under the beds, in your shoes, between the couch cushions, and between your toes. I even check my cereal in the morning. I realize they are great for kids to help them imagine and innovate their own ideas, but to adults they are tiny land mines, waiting to take you down when your arms are full or sneaking up on you and attacking in the middle of the night when all you are trying to do is get to the bathroom.

Now many moons ago when I was a kid, I too indulged in the delicious art of Legos but there was only one set you could get. It had like a one foot by one foot pad to build on and you received maybe 20 2x8 legos, some 2x4 legos, a couple 2x2's, and a couple 12x2's. If you were lucky you got a couple roof pieces that never fit any house you could actually build, so when you were done, your project usually looked like the last place standing in tornado alley. My how things have changed. You can actually get sets that end up looking exactly like the cover of the box. Add to that the supreme marriage of Legos and Star Wars and you get the greatest, most marketable boys toys of all time.

It seems that with every birthday and the passing of each Christmas, that galaxy far, far away is moving closer and closer, it might even exist in my sons bedroom. If you step into this wonderland,(be careful where you step) you can find Jabba the Hut's sail barge, the Millennium Falcon, a Jedi StarFighter with hyper drive booster ring, an Imperial landing craft, an AT-AT, a Naboo N-1 Starfighter to name a few. Sounds awesome right? Well if you have ever helped with one of these or looked at the box if you were giving them as a gift, you would know that they are assembled out of hundreds of pieces. The Jedi StarFighter is comprised of 585 pieces by itself, the Millennium Falcon has over one thousand, yeah, take a minute and think about that. These aren't just old fashioned, snap together, stack one on the other Legos either. I don't know who possibly thinks them up. I sometimes think the creators are truly from the dark side, either that or bunch of MIT professors get together and laugh as they design these toys that have blueprints more complex than most houses. They probably giggle to themselves knowing that parents everywhere will be spending hours sorting pieces and constructing.

I happen to like putting these things together, as sick as that may sound. It is probably the appreciation and joy I see in my kids face when it is complete that keeps me going. The Jedi StarFighter took 4 1/2 hours and the boys were long asleep when it was completed around 10:30 p.m. I set it on the table in front of the box and admired it. I think I have a minor in engineering by now. The boys loved it and scampered upstairs with it the next day and in about 15 minutes I heard the inevitable crunch-crash followed by Daaaaaaaad!

That's the hardest pill to swallow, knowing all that hard work will never hold up to the boys actually playing with it. It never goes back together the same way either. My wife has instituted some new "Lego" rules. After construction is complete, the toy is set on a shelf to be enjoyed at a distance, then gradually, the boys can play, (carefully) with it a few minutes at a time. It's like letting the toy build up an immunity to kid powers. It seems to be working, the spare parts box of Legos is holding steady but there has been talk of an impending war on the horizon, the Jedi StarFighter must be ready to defeat Jabba the Hut and the AT-AT, possibly with help from the Naboo N-1 Starfighter, and if this happens it will mean nothing but a huge pile of Legos. I hope a treaty can be reached but Jabba is very stubborn and rarely deals with rebels.

Stay tuned, right now I'm working on plans for my greatest invention.......Lego glue!!!