Parents: Distracted Dad
Richard Hearn discovers there is more to Lego than meets the eye
Don’t let anyone tell you that Lego is child’s play. When me and The Boy ‘play’ with Lego, there is nothing simple about it. Instead, there are many rules made up (I reckon, on the spot) by The Boy.
Let me set the scene. We are not colleagues working democratically on a joint project. There’s more of a sort of servant/master thing going on, or perhaps a white collar/blue collar divide. He is the architect of our creation, keeping the vision in his head. I am the quarryman, digging deep through the primary-coloured rubble to be scolded – “No!” or patronised – “Well done!” – in turn. (To risk another metaphor, I am a dull dog, dropping a found object from the garden at his owner’s slippered feet. My treatment is dependent on whether I’ve deposited some long-lost keys or a headless bird).
“Lego is a four letter word. So is IKEA”
I digress. Lego is a four letter word. So is IKEA. And one day, I experienced a moment of clarity: these Scandinavian imports (while not quite as deliberately detrimental to our islands as the Vikings) have both been playing the same con-trick on children and adults respectively. Both cleverly say: ’These are the parts we have used to make what’s on the box.’ Both are intensely frustrating when you try to follow the so-called instructions.
Let me stress, I’m very proud of The Boy’s ability to invent and build his own creations. His Lego career started with him creating walls like something out of Tetris, which he’d become extremely protective of, refusing to have them broken up after he‘d gone to bed. Instead they‘d remain, silent and menacing like Easter Island statues. If we ever knocked one over and tried to rebuild it, he‘d know. Maybe their random-seeming pattern was based on prime numbers? He moved on to boats of increasing size, then dinosaurs as drawn by Etch-a-Sketch. Next came tiny three-piece planes, and, of course, all along, Star Wars vehicles.
Just like his Tetris-style walls, we discover these objects scattered through the house after he’s gone to bed, as mysterious and intricately designed as crop circles. And suddenly we love to see his Lego – because these objects are so distinctively him.
