Childhood Memories: Building Blocks
Part one of a series of memories from my childhood.
I had a lot of Lego has a kid — two big boxes of it, boxes that I’d spend hours sifting through for just the right part to add to my latest masterpiece. I was six, maybe seven at the time, and I bored quickly of the instruction manuals. What I liked to make instead were things that wouldn’t fly into a thousand pieces if I dropped them (or usually, if my younger brother dropped them).
I’d build tanks and planes and boats, practical things that I could play with. Function over form most of the time, but I’d always make sure all the bricks were the same color — it was sacrilege to even consider otherwise. And I’d use nothing but first-rate Lego, not the cheap imitation brands that just didn’t fit properly or that were colored more pink than red.
The Lego men I put inside these creations were always likenesses of myself, or my friends, or my family. I used to imagine it was me flying that spaceship, and my best friend steering that tank, because I knew I could trust that other little yellow man to always have my back. That was until we had a falling out not long after my parents divorced, in which case he couldn’t be trusted and never stepped foot into my spaceship again.
But most vividly I remember the day I had a fight with my younger brother. Knowing my love for Lego — and how long it had taken me to build up my collection — he methodically picked every Lego man out of the boxes and buried them in the back garden. Finding out not long after, I’d dug furiously in the spot I’d learned to be their impromptu grave, until I’d hit yellow sand and found not one head, torso or pair of legs.
Soon after that I stopped playing with Lego completely, disheartened by the loss of the friends that had joined me on my adventures into space, into wars and across the countryside that was our kitchen bench-top.
