LEtting GO

As far back as I can remember, we had a bin of Legos at our house. Most of them were from the 70s, with people heads the size of large marbles, wagon-styled wheels, and little doors that would be impossible for the big-headed people to fit through, even if I could have figured out at that young age how to build them out of the crazy random and broken pieces we owned. 

So when I was 8 or 9, a desire was born in my heart to own my own set of Legos. **Disclaimer. I am aware of the fact that the plural of LEGO is LEGO, but after 30-plus years of saying and writing "Legos," have decided a disclaimer is easier and more comfortable than correcting myself.**

As you probably know, Legos are not inexpensive.The price tag for a set of Legos was far beyond my allowance-saving potential, and the only hope I had of owning my own was to petition my Gramma to buy me a set for birthdays or Christmas. She came through. First came a police station, then a fire station, and eventually, a Technic go-kart set. Each set, I built, then left intact on a shelf in my room, ready to play with. The instructions, I kept in a safe place in case I needed them. At some point, I bought another bin of Legos in which I put all the pieces of the fire and police stations along with the instructions. The Technic set, I kept in it's original box, not wanting to mix the two kinds of Legos.

Then, along came my kids. At some point, I allowed them to play with my Legos, letting them build random things out of the pieces, and didn't bother trying to build the stations.

When Joe received his first Lego set, I was thrilled. It was a blue car that could be rebuilt several different ways. I had visions of him building it, playing with it, then carefully taking it apart and rebuilding it when he got tired of one style. I place the instructions and extra pieces together in a ziplock bag, instructing him to keep them all together so that nothing would get lost. I don't think the car remained intact for even one day. Boy that he is, he like to pretend that the car would crash... 

As the Lego sets kept coming, I told the kids (in vain) to keep the instruction booklets on a bookshelf where they would be safe and easily found. But, inevitably, after the initial build, the booklet would end up under a bed or at the back of a closet, bent up and falling apart.

A friend of mine has a son that is conscientious enough to take care of his instructions. He then started his own business, renting the booklets out to his friends at school. My kids aren't like that. It has come to the point where I have confiscated all the booklets and have them hidden in a drawer in my desk.

Joe came to me the other day wanting to build a car he had seen in the fire station instructions. I handed him the booklet with a strict warning that the booklet needed to come back to me AS SOON AS he was done with it. He came back five minutes later, complaining that he couldn't find the base to the car. He swapped that booklet out for another, but was back with that one in another five minutes. No surprise there. As the kids get into building something, they don't want to put their projects back into the Lego bin come clean-up time, so they squirrel the pieces away in random parts of their rooms. Zivah will take a liking to a certain Lego piece, and I have found stashes of pieces in several clothes drawers, backpacks, other bins, or other toys. I would be amazed if we could build ANYTHING by the book.

If the mixing of sets and disregard for instructions weren't bad enough, my kids even take apart the mini-figures! Removing an arm or a hand is unconscionable in my book. Seeing the mini-figures suffering from missing body parts about does me in. 

As much as this drives me crazy, I have decided to let go of it all and look on the bright side. The kids love building with Legos, and they are being far more creative with their builds then following instructions allows. Instead of bemoaning that the cool Star Wars ship has little chance of ever being built again, I am enjoying the Lego mess.

Above, a dwarf from a Hobbit set relaxes in a hot tub that Joe built, while Finley's mermaid man swims in his aquarium in the background. Below, Z has her own thing going.