The Many Stages of Building LEGO as a Grown-up
By Dan Brown Last weekend I put together a LEGO set. It was a time. Here, for the benefit of readers, are the 12 steps one goes through as an adult while making a LEGO Mars Rover. Just in case you’re thinking of doing the same thing. For the record, I built the smallest, cheapest Rover that goes for less than $20, not the other massive Mars vehicles the Danish toy company sells for hundreds of dollars. I thought the small one would be easy. STEP ONE: Carried along by memories of boyhood fun with friends and your brother, you eagerly rip open the plastic package, being careful not to lose any of the pieces that spill onto the coffee table in your living room. “Really?” you think, “That dinky little toy has so many components? There’s gotta be a thousand of them.” Regardless, you still look forward to what you anticipate will be, at most, 20 minutes of mindless fun. STEP TWO: With your spirit bolstered by pure enthusiasm, you pull out the construction instructions to unfold them. It dimly registers that there are 18 stages, printed on both sides of a wide glossy sheet, plus a large number of those stages have sub-stages. That’s a lot of work for a vehicle that’s not much bigger than a baseball! But you are not daunted. STEP THREE: Mashing a few small pieces together, you begin to suspect LEGO instructions are kind of like IKEA furniture-building directions. Since LEGO is a global brand, despite its origins in Denmark, the instructions are necessarily vague pictograms you are finding less and less helpful as the afternoon stretches on. In particular, you curse the colouring as you try to make the small pieces fit together, noting you can’t tell the difference between black and grey components on the instruction sheet. There are a lot of each colour. STEP FOUR: You stare at the instructions, your eyes growing blurry. Damn, this is more difficult than you thought it would be! STEP FIVE: You feel your thumbs growing raw from handling the tiny, unforgiving, sharp-at-the-corners plastic pieces. Your mind wanders. You find yourself pondering the length of time it takes for calluses to form on your fingers. STEP SIX: You run your rough hands over the pieces on the coffee table, once more trying to sort them by shape and colour. Not for the first time, you swear the makers of this particular package of LEGO must have left out that one crucial component you’re searching for. Desperate, you ask your wife, seated beside you on the couch reading a paperback romantasy, if she can see it anywhere on the table. STEP SEVEN: Just as you run out of hope, your feeble eyes spot it. Like every other time you swore a piece was missing, it was not. You decide it’s time to take a break. Your shoulders have begun to ache and you feel as though you’ve been hunched over for a couple hours – because you have been. You know you will benefit from getting some mental space. You go into the bedroom to play with your two cats, dozing without a care on the bed. STEP EIGHT: Back from the bedroom, you lock a few more pieces into place. You fear making this tiny toy is slowly, inevitably becoming a career for you. STEP NINE: Time for a booze break! You ask your wife if she will join you for a shot of something strong. She chooses a whiskey from the nearby liquor cabinet that is infused with the essence of black walnuts. You scarf the shot down, hoping it will fortify you with courage until the LEGO building is done for the day. Back at it. STEP TEN: You’ve pretty much given up consulting the instructions. Instead, you rely on the photo plastered on the ripped-open package for guidance. Your wife notes one of the key pieces you added 20 minutes ago is in the wrong place. You take this in stride, knowing your marriage is built on a solid foundation of love, respect, trust, and walnut whiskey. STEP ELEVEN: You throw in the towel for good, letting your wife know she is welcome to complete the final stages of this particular LEGO build. Sweetheart that she is, she seems to have little trouble doing so, finishing up in short order STEP TWELVE: Staring at the six-wheeled model in your hand, you realize you also bought two other LEGO sets, which are waiting patiently in their packages to be assembled. Does it ever end? Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
