Sunday, December 27, 2009

Lego Master

Today I was schooled in the art, construction and design of the world of Legos.
The master?

(No, he didn't build these)

So now, evidently, Legos are it and a bag of chips. Fabulous. I have built a house or two in my day. You know the kind: SQUARE. No, nothing more. Just square. Using square blocks. The bigger the better because they are easier to maneuver, and then you finish faster and you can do something else, like play a rousing game of Ker-PLUNK!

Today the Lego Master built oh, four or five vehicles. Not cars, not toys. VEHICLES. They all have specific names, unless he built them without any directions whatsoever, at which point they are "imagination cars." Yesterday he spent much of the day building this enormous Fire Station complex, complete with three attached garages (with garage doors that functioned), a radar system on the roof, a fire truck with a 3-part telescoping ladder, a fire chief truck, a tree, a cat (in the tree) and a LEGO COFFEE MAKER (for inside the fire station). There were three enormous instruction books, which are more helpful than having no instruction books, but really don't explain anything. There are pictures with each step, but you have to figure out which pieces they added in each subsequent step. They don't tell you, and there is no master list. Unsurprisingly, the age-range on this toy is 8-14 years old.

Did I mention that the Lego Master is FOUR?

Suddenly my whole "build a square structure" looks pretty lame. There are Lego pieces the size of a kernel of corn. Most are in varying shades of grey, but depending on the project, you might luck out and get a white, red, blue or green. And when these masterpieces are finished? The are unbelievable. How someone sits there and figures out how one might construct a Lego-Whatever is beyond me. I understand (kind of, in theory) how it looks on the outside. But it's the guts of the matter that is particularly confounding to me.

I'm not sure if this Rainman-like ability to whip up a Lego masterpiece with little to no help will continue to grow and thrive. We could be looking at the next Frank Lloyd Wright, award-winning architect or mechanical engineer. In the meantime, I'll stick to my Kindergarten-level Lego building skillz, because frankly, that's all I've got. Hopefully my ability to make my nephew laugh("You CWACK ME OUT!!) Will carry me through until he learns some other new skill which once again bypasses my own.

I'm pretty lousy at an Etch-a-Sketch as well.


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