Saturday, May 3, 2008

Legos: just dump the bucket

A few years after the tutu and ballet slippers were put away I discovered legos. Scenes from The Bird and the Bee’s music video from their song La La La remind me of the legos from my childhood. The legos I had as a kid came in a plastic tote with a lid that looks like a giant lego, as well as a handle that curves over the top for easy transportation. The bucket contained various sizes and shapes of legos depending on the number of connecting circular knobs on the top of the small pieces of plastic. Some had four by two knobs, the big ones had eight by two, and others were only one knob thick and several knobs long. The legos also varied in color: blue, red, white, yellow, and sometimes green or silver, depending on the special feature of the lego bucket.

Almost anything could be made out of legos—at least a shape that resembled the object. (Since the legos only came in squares and rectangles, it was difficult to create anything spherical in shape.) The easiest thing to build out of legos of course was a block, a house, or some kind of boxy car. The tote usually came with a special step by step instruction booklet to build a car or some other pre-designed figure. When my brother and I played with legos, we made our own lego creations. We dumped the lego bucket and spread out all of the pieces, occasionally fighting over the special green or silver pieces, but eventually coming to a compromise. We created our own army of specially designed airplanes and jets, with detachable wheels and wings, laser guns, and even force fields and battle. An entire afternoon was spent designing lego jets, cars, or villages. When it was time to clean up, the best designed lego figures stayed assembled and placed carefully back into the lego tote, while the other pieces were hastily gathered and tossed in until the next time

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