TimsBlog

I’ve can not remember when I got serious about building with legos, but guess it was around 5 maybe 6. The “expert” sets just came out. The big box had plans for a car , a motor cycle and a drag racer. There was a batteries powered motor that came with it also. The expert sets had gears and axles so you could built transmissions and trans axles to drive wheels. The control box was corded so that sucked. I spent up to 5 hours at a time for days building. I came real close to building a Trans Am like the one in Smoky and the bandit. I used regular legos like the roof pieces to makethe body rounded. I used the fence piece and another small angled roof piece to create that unique grill TA’s had.

Being an only child I noticed early on that my friends that had siblings were not really into playing legos at my house. I had two friends that loved playing with legos for hours with me. One had an older sister who was 17 years older and a brother that was 22 years older when he was only 12. The other friend was another only child.

This now makes me think about the connection between isolated children and their affection for legos. One of the most productive ways to deal with isolation or being alone is to use your mind to solve problems and create without any importance really on the end product. It’s the motions that simulate the mind not the satisfaction of making something useful or attractive.

A lot of these lego kids go on to use computer with the same attitude of “What can I do with this thing” just like legos. I remember firing up my first home commuter and playing a few games. That wore off in about one day since I already had an Atari. I was then left staring at a blinking curse wondering what can I do with this?

Today legos are amazing. You can build tons of things from their site with online step by step instructions. They even have a program that lets you build something virtually and then they will make instructions for you. I know they have robotic legos that are connected to a PC also I just never checked them out.