What did you call your Lego pieces?
Giles Turnball over at The Morning News has put together a great piece about the naming conventions children have developed and use for their Lego pieces.
My family and I definitely had our own Lego nomenclature: If my brother and I were digging through one of our gigantic bins of Lego pieces you might hear one of us say, “I’m looking for a grey onesie,” and we both new exactly which piece the other was referring to.
I have fond memories of Legos—it was my toy of choice for any gift-receiving occasion (i.e. Christmas, birthdays). I would get a “big” set for Christmas and it was usually one of the new castles (they were my favorite), but I also recall getting a huge pirate ship, an airport and a train set that is still, believe it or not, brought out, assembled and placed around the Christmas tree if I’m at my parents’ house.
Whenever I received a new set I would immediately put it together using the included instructions, however I would always tear it apart within a few days and build something born out of my imagination. I eventually got to the point where I could put a set together based on the cover of the box without having to look at the instructions.
As I collected sets over the years, they would all find there way into one of the two large bins that were dedicated exclusively to our Lego collection (my Mother still has them to this day and is keeping them, “for her grandchildren”). If inspiration struck, I would dump the contents of each of the bins onto a sheet (this made for easy cleanup later) and have days-long building sessions that usually revolved around a specific theme: castles, pirates, spaceships.
I think that the years that I was playing with Legos were probably the most creative years of my life. I can recall how vivid my imagination was and how I could picture the completed set in my head before I started building. Sometimes, I would search through all the bricks and pick out each piece before I started assembling my grand vision.
I also created lists of sets that I wanted Lego to create, hoping that I could somehow send them to the Lego factory where they would be realized. I eventually discovered, when I was older, that some of my ideas had become a reality despite the fact that I never did submit my lists to Lego.
Sadly, I can also recall when my imagination started to fade and I started to realize that I was “too old” to play with Legos and that I had too many other responsibilities, namely homework. I sometimes think that if I (or someone) had continued to fuel my imagination and creativity at that point in my life I would have become a very different person than I am today (not that I’m unhappy with who I am). I can honestly say that school sucked the creativity and enthusiasm for life that I had as a child right out of me and replaced it with the boring monotony that was “education”.
I had dreams and aspirations of becoming a Lego engineer, but I can definitely see a parallel between my Lego days and my current career as a web developer: I still get to create sets (objects) from various building blocks (languages, frameworks). I can tear them apart and build new sets from these same building blocks, configuring them in different and unique ways. So, perhaps I haven’t strayed too far from my childhood dreams.
And yes, I do know that “Lego” is the correct plural form of the word, but I’ve always said “Legos” with an “s” and it just sounds right to me so I’m sticking with it!
