I was born in 1967, the youngest of three brothers.
That sounds like a really dramatic first sentence, but really I just wanted to explain why there were already legos on the carpet the day I was born, and that they were all pretty old legos by today’s standards.
My brothers and I had a shared collection. Big tub full of random parts.
We made cars and crashed them into one another. Two of us would push them across the floor to a certain explosive end, while the third would be the announcer and supply explosion and screaming driver sound effects. Life was good.
Later we made airplanes and dropped them from the bunk beds. If you’re crew cabin remained intact, your pilot was siad to have lived. Remember though, this was all before the first minifigs.
Later, as the youngest, I inherited the collection by default. My brothers had move on to bigger and better things, like getting rejected by girls, and breaking car engines by "fixing" them.
I soon followed them into the inevitable dark age.
I came out of the Lego Eclipse when I was in college. After accepting that fact that a car that runs does not need "fixing" and still getting rejected my most girls (on the entire planet) I rediscovered my bricks.
I was looking at the minifigs in all the kits at Toys R Us, and I realized that while there was no actual military, in most of the themes, Pirates, Town, Space... it seemed that most citizens worked for the state. Police, fire fighters, knights, medical personnel (Scandinavian countries mostly socialized medical system). It struck me how orderly and "Orwellian" everything seemed. Well, that lit a fire in my young political sarcastic mind, so I started buying them again and building things like towns with gigantic police fortresses in the middle, or armies of police tanks... strange stuff.
Then I really got into building settings. Dioramas, groups of buildings. Big stuff. At about this time, I went into the Army, and my build time dropped radically.
For the last 17.5 years, I have struggled to balance a military career with increasing family responsibilities and my bricks. Needless to say, the bricks get the short end of THAT deal...
Keith Goldman introduced me to the on line aspect of the hobby, and badgered me into attending my first fest. Now I love both aspects of the hobby.
I built the MOC posted on this site while stationed in Honduras. Again, largely because Keith would not get off my back about building. I was pretty excited about posting it. It was for a contest and I was very focused during the build!
But I do what I can. MOCpages allows me an opportunity to be active in the hobby without actually building. My bricks and I are often separated for years at a time (occupational hazard).
I love the new lego colors, and all the radical developments with minifigs! You can build so much MORE now! I love it as much today as when I was slamming imaginary drivers into fiery deaths on my parents kitchen floor. Sigh… Tender youth.
If you actually read this far… I commend , and thank you!
Attack!
Permalink | June 23, 2012, 10:05 pm
