Subject:
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Re: How did you come out of your Dark Ages?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.people
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Date:
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Sat, 25 Nov 2000 23:06:21 GMT
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Viewed:
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614 times
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In lugnet.people, Kevin Zwicker writes:
> I was wondering if any of you had any interesting stories about what
> prompted your exit from your Dark Ages.
My exit from my Lego Dark Ages was prompted by fatherhood.
My son, Spencer, was born in 1996. I bought him some Duplo when he was two.
He enjoyed it well enough, but preferred his Matchbox cars. Last year, my
folks instructed me to clear the last of my childhood belongings from their
attic. My younger brother has no children yet, and was happy to let me take
the Lego.
It was not quite my son's fourth birthday. Clearly, to me, the older kids'
Lego had to be placed in storage for a while. You would think that my wife,
who teaches elementary school, would immediately recognize the small-part
hazard, and agree with me. Curiously, she did not. I made the mistake of not
packing the Lego box into the attic the moment we brought it home. When I came
home from work the next day, my wife was watching the tube, and off to her
side, Spencer was sitting on the floor with tons of little pieces
scattered around him.
There was no going back from this point. I tried to clean up, and Spencer
protested immediately. My wife said, "teach him." Some of you may remember my
first posts here on Lugnet, in which I described the fascination of watching a
young builder discover Lego for the first time (he was *much* more interested
in Lego than Duplo), while simultaneously trying to teach him that a trans-neon
antenna part was *not* a lollipop stick...
> Was there a specific set?
Not initially. However, several months before The Collection was out and in
Spencer's hands, my wife spotted <set:6958> and <set:6493> on clearance at a
local Costco. She brought them home. I said, "Spencer's a little young. Put
these away for a few years." These went into the closet, however two weeks
after The Collection was out, these sets came out, too. Additionally, my wife
was married once before. Her two kids, now both in college, also had some
Lego. Their collections were added to the main stash.
> Did you
> visit someone with a layout? Did you immediatety go on a shopping spree?
As is my habit, any time that something new comes into my life, I visit a
search engine, type in the relevant key words, and see what I can learn. Look
what I found! A whole bunch of adults crazy for Lego! The shopping spree
occurred only after I had been reading Lugnet for a few weeks. I had serious
collection envy, and new ambitions fueled by the amazing creations displayed on
the Net by AFOL. (Plus I had a wallet, something I didn't have as a kid.)
Of course, 95% of my Lego time is spent with Spencer, and I haven't finished a
single project yet... :^( At age 4 1/2, faced with a collection of about
120,000 parts, he's overwhelmed. I've organized some of it, particularly the
small parts, but I'm not finished. He doesn't know how to get only the pieces
he needs, and to avoid taking out tons of unnecessary bags and boxes. Thus he
needs me to *find* the pieces, and then to *clean up after him* when he's
done... He can actually build sets as complex as the Yellow Castle and the
Naboo Fighter with only minimal verbal prompting from me, and some occasional
mechanical assistance (a kid his age knows where to put a 2 X 8 plate, but he
might not be strong enough to squeeze it all the way down).
Looking back, I admire my own sense of restraint. I blame my wife for getting
this started! :^) If I had managed to get my way last year, I wouldn't be as
crazy as I am now!
--
John J. Ladasky Jr., Ph.D.
Department of Biology
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD 21218
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