The Lego, The Child & The Working From Home

Written by YogurtTop

Lego, everyone loves it, well I do, so does my 4 year old, and given the AFOL (Adult Fans Of Lego) groups on Facebook and the Lego Masters series on TV, I’m guessing mini me and I are not alone.

The Child, as I mentioned, he is 4 years old, and provides me with endless frustration and entertainment in equal measure.

The Working From Home is a situation many of us have had to enjoy/endure whilst this pesky virus persists.

There, that’s all points covered, blog finished, off to the pub for a… no wait… they’re shut… sacre bleu mon ami.

Suppose I’ll have to carry on… there’s beer in the fridge after all.

I have combined these three items, not (hopefully) as some random collection to extract an irrelevant commentary, but more as an insight to the daily trials of a single father whilst on lockdown.

We shall start with Lego.

Having been brought up with the multi-coloured, danish created, infuriatingly interlocking plastic brick, I saw no reason not to inflict said medium onto the next generation… and no it’s not so I can re-capture my youth… honest.

I could spend the next 300 words telling you about what sets I bought, how I sniped people on eBay, the hours spent constructing and creating various buildings, but that’s boring, so here’s a picture…

Awesome isn’t it!

Now, the reason for it’s inclusion.  This began well before lockdown, I had most of this in place by the start of the year, but once I had a child in lockdown, he needs stimulation, yes I had bought movies to watch (literally anything by Disney Pixar), which I also have had to watch millions of times… I can recite Incredibles 2 word for word… try me. Outside there is a bike, a swing, a pool if the weather permits, and his wonderfully inquisitive nature that means if he sees Grandad set off down the path to the garden shed, he MUST follow.

But I needed something more creative, so once we had enough buildings I concentrated on the minifgures, policemen, firemen, criminals, super hero’s, Toy Story, Star Wars, ninjas, you name it (except Harry Potter, that’s a story for another blog), we have it.  Then to inspire said 4 year old, buy random heads, torso’s and legs for him to build himself… and that’s where the problem begins.

My boss is famously OCD, and it’s hilarious, I shouldn’t mock the afflicted… but I do, get over it.  Mocking him when he has to hoover for the 7th time today because someone dropped an atom of Walkers Prawn Cocktail on the floor never gets old… and I was safe in the knowledge that this (sometimes crippling) compulsion had no place in my psyche… or did it?

My child was quite happy sitting there playing with my construction, and as anticipated, the swapping of heads and bodies was entertaining… then I saw it… Captain American had Woody’s legs and Darth Vader’s head… Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Some things are sacrosanct.

The head of the Dark Lord of the Sith on the shoulders of The First Avenger, what was my child thinking, and it didn’t stop there C3PO’s head ended up on the local fire chief, Batman (or at least his head and cape) was driving the pizza van, and horror of horrors R2D2 was head of a local crime syndicate.

What could I do?

The answer I’m afraid is not a damn thing.

Whilst to me these simple (yet now amazingly detailed) bricks are there to be played with, you can’t buy your kid a toy, then tell him how to play with it.  I began this journey wanting him to play with it, express himself, if he wants half a dozen Stormtroopers manning the local hospital, I have to respect that. 

He’s wrong of course.

At the time of writing this we have just had his 4th birthday, and I managed to buy 2 sets that had all the characters from The Incredibles, he loves that, the movies, the fruit drinks, the cuddly toys… lets see how he likes it when I put Darth Vaders head on Violet… I’m joking… I’ll change it back before he comes back from spending time with mommy… but I might WhatsApp a picture of it to him…

I wanted him to have fun with Lego, and he does, I never expected it to reveal that even though I laugh in the face of OCD (I can be very untidy), there are some things that can invoke a rather unexpected reaction.

There are many things that the world needs to learn from this lockdown situation, and I would like to wager, that in our own way, we have all learnt something about ourselves… my son… well he needs to learn Darth Vader’s head DOES NOT belong on Captain America’s shoulders…

I shall be having words… which will probably be ignored… and that’s ok.

Sources

pixabay.com

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