A Million Little Pieces.

I don't remember Lego being such a bitch.

When I was playing with Lego as a child, it wasn't as specialized as it is today. I'm pretty sure all we had were 6 different pieces (9 if you included the door, window, and wheel accessories) to fulfill our imagination. We made things like houses, towers, houses with wheels, towers with doors, bricks with windows - the possibilities were endless, right?

I've just spent most of the morning helping the Oldest Boy assemble one of his Birthday presents - the Lego Transformer pictured to the right. He was having some issues (one of them being that his brother was "helping" him) so I stepped in to see if I could lend a hand.

Now, contrary to what some people think and this blog probably shows, I'm not retarded. I can build with Lego. Sure, Starscream (the Transformer we were assembling) did start to look like a brick at times, and I did ask where the square green piece for the lawn was, but we did eventually get him put together. I didn't even phone the helpline - so there.

The thing is, to construct these intricate toys, you have to have the proper piece in the proper place in the proper order. I don't know if you've ever seen a 9 year old's organizational plan when it comes to Lego, but it pretty much involves just ripping open the bags and dumping the pieces on the floor. (This kills the neat freak in me to no end, but that's another post.) 99% of the assembly time is spent looking for a specific piece, and only finding it once you've moved some furniture and checked each kid's mouth to make sure they haven't swallowed anything.

After the marathon session of robotic construction I would equate the soreness of my back to someone who has spent 2 hours wrapping Christmas gifts (hence my preference for gift bags.) - and now I get to go to work, so that should help things in that department. (Sarcasm detected!)

The Boy was happy with the results, so it's worth the effort.

One problem. He asked if tomorrow we could build this:

See all those pieces? The instructions look like the builders manual to the Space Shuttle.


God help me.






Later.