Today I’m grateful for Lego. I firmly believe Lego is the greatest toy ever. Not only does it open up a world of imaginative possibilities, it teaches creativity and design and even engineering. It encourages kids to experiment and invent. Nowadays there are a thousand different Lego sets, many of which are branded by famous media properties: Harry Potter and Star Wars and everything in between. Back in my day, we had “town Lego” and “space Lego” and “castle Lego” and that was it. Thom and I spent endless hours building things– always careful not to mix up our respective pieces, of course. Every Christmas, we got to choose something from the JCPenney catalog for Grandma to buy us. Thom and I invariably picked Lego sets, and Grandma delivered every time.
Unfortunately I can’t find any pictures of myself with Lego, but I searched the archives and found a few of my kids. Here’s a very early shot of Alex and Kyra playing with their toys, and in the background are a bunch of the huge plastic block (not actually Lego), as well as some smaller Duplo and Lego. It looks like Kyra is building a Lego tower.
At some point I gave the kids my own Lego, stored away since college. Their creations weren’t always impressive, but they had fun.
Lego started branching out into new lines of toys, including Bionicle and Ninjago and the start of the Hollywood branding. Alex and Zack both liked Bionicles.
For fifteen years, our basement carpet was always covered with Lego. It was the only area of the house we didn’t require the kids to pick up each night, and Lego has a way of filling all available space in a room. But I didn’t mind, because it meant the kids were exercising their creativity and playing together.
So kids these days can have their Minecraft (which is arguably a similar creative building exercise), but I’ll take Lego any day.