Legos

Every kid has some toy that is just his absolute favorite. He'll play with his other toys, sure, but if you ask him, he will tell you which he likes best. For an extended period of my own childhood, I would have reported Legos as my favorites.

I would routinely ignore whatever personality my characters were supposed to have, as well as any preconceived storyline that Lego wanted me to play along. My dragon, instead of being caged by a band of valiant knights, was kept as a pet and a kind of security system by some eccentrics. He made friends with the Wolfpack knights from another set and waged a playful attack against the underwater police command center, which responded by dispatching its shark-shaped submarine for battle. The underwater command center was one of my most ingenious inventions. It was the only model I built that was not inspired by an actual Lego set. It was built on a 64×64 grey baseplate with computers, a wall of windows, and a docking bay for the aforementioned shark-shaped submarine. The creativity with which I weaved together the stories of the characters I played with was truly astonishing.

So it comes as a disappointment to me that Lego has decided to focus on the manufacture of franchised playsets. Star Wars Lego and Harry Potter Lego have all but overcome generic Lego Town and Castle sets. Because these stories have already been written and are well-known by any child getting the Lego playsets, they subvert creativity. Now, Lego is still producing the more generic models, but all I've been able to find in stores are the franchised models. My advice to the corporation would be to abandon this more-profitable franchise angle and go back to the old standards.

When I was young, I had my own ideas of what directions Lego should take its playsets in the future. I even wrote a letter to Lego at the young age of six. Although that didn't come out the way I hoped, Lego was very nice about the whole thing.

When building a Lego creation of my own, I rarely paid attention to the color of pieces. When you need such-and-such a piece and you're digging in a big bin for the precise shape you need, you are unlikely to reject a piece simply because its color doesn't match the others in your creation. So while Lego's original designs are always delightfully color-coordinated, my creations were easy to spot because of their random coloring patterns.

During day camp at a local elementary school, my friends and I would build huge creations with the camp's massive supply of Lego pieces. These were not creations with any rhyme or reason, however; they were created to be as big and cumbersome as possible. Indeed, they were made for destruction. After about an hour of attaching Legos precariously to the superstructure, we would count backwards from ten and heave the thing into the air. Seconds later, it shattered spectacularly into hundreds of pieces. The counselors said this was okay as long as we were willing to pick up the pieces afterward, so we did it again and again. This pastime (destruction) doesn't get old. I split my time evenly between creating/destroying Legos and playing air hockey at that camp.

In fifth grade, I was involved in a special project with Lego software. I built an computer-controlled elevator out of Technic blocks which got me featured in the Chapel Hill Herald, one of the local newspapers.

My next brush with Lego came in the summer of 2003, when I built and programmed the Lego Mars Rover along with two of my friends. My work here won me the 2003 Catalyst Award. The rover's complex programming gave it the ability to autonomously navigate a foreign environment without any input besides "begin." This included detecting and avoiding obstacles, as well as a complicated programming fix for a hardware problem with one of the electric motors. I was quite proud of the result.

It was after Summer Ventures that I stumbled upon the online Lego CAD community, centered at LDraw.org. I downloaded MLCad and started building with virtual Legos. My real Legos had all been put away to make space in my increasingly adult-looking room, so it was fun to play with the virtual equivalent. Building with virtual Legos is rewarding because there are unlimited parts available. Anything is possible. And because colors can be changed with the click of a mouse, my computer creations were as color-coordinated as the official Lego models. The newest generation of LDraw editors and viewers is a powerful tool for the Lego enthusiast. I have built some impressive structures.

I hope that someday my children will have as much fun with Legos as I had in my youth and continue to have today.