In the first of an occasional series of dispatches from the lockdown home front, former TV3 reporter Charlotte Shipman discovers what Lego can teach you about life
A friend asked my husband (from the appropriate distance), “How’s Charlotte doing?” He replied, “She’s really getting into her Lego.”
He’s genuinely bewildered but also dead right. I’d suggested to our kids we could re-build one (or ALL!) of the sets of Lego we had amassed over eight years of child rearing.
The idea was received with great gusto. Just the idea though. The meticulous sifting through thousands of pieces of Lego, across four containers was not as widely embraced.
At our house, the sets are made within an hour and last one to two days before being destroyed.
I’ve been to other houses and I’ve seen sets stay intact for months, YEARS even. But we have a deconstruction gene in this house. Sorry to friends who have experienced this – we think he may have a future in engineering…..or vandalism.
“If we make these, and I help you, let’s keep them together for longer than two days.”
Solemn nods signalled we had a deal.
So we began. Truck and trailer given as a reward for an eye operation in 2017 – prepare to be re-assembled.
On assembly, I’ve tried two approaches. You’ll notice I’ve changed pronouns. No big surprise, but the project became less we, more 'I' with vested observers. Tiny, but vocal back seat drivers who have zero idea about personal space.
The first tactic is to get all full “first born” on it. Get the parts list from the back of the booklet and painstakingly try to get all the bits needed before embarking on the making. I’m a third born. This method is soul destroying and doesn’t work.
I’ve also tried to “wing it” (real youngest child-like) and be super casual. “Just go page by page and find the bits as you go,” I tell the kids. This is also soul destroying and also doesn’t work.
“Go ahead in the book and see what we need next and I’ll keep looking for this bit,” I say. “No” is the reply. We have to do it in order. We have to sift through each box of unordered bits (that ice cream container was meant to only have grey pieces in it) to find the right one. The one I probably vacuumed up in 2018.
All those times I’d felt the deep satisfaction of a clinking piece whooshing up the Electrolux were now haunting me. How could I have possibly known that every single piece, crucial to the completion of this project, would have been devoured throughout the years of rage cleaning? (That’s a thing right? Angry vacuuming?)
As I’m instructing which piece I need like the surgeons you see on TV – “I need a two-dot flat piece,” (the “stat” is implied) – none eventuate. I repeat the instruction while simultaneously swishing through the bath of varying size and coloured (but not the right size or colour) pieces of plastic in the largest vat we’re using to house the bits. Then I start pointing at the instructions (or constructions as our children call them). “This bit.” More demented pointing. “Like this, this, THIS two-dot flat piece.”
It dawns on me. Our six-year-old and I see the world (of Lego) very differently.
“Noooo,” he howls, shaking with his hands-up like he’s under a piñata, one hit away from exploding treats. “That’s not a two-dot flat piece. A flat piece has no dots. That’s a two long-ed piece.” Groan. No wonder it’s taking us six hours to do one set. Also, I sense I’ll need to be putting in more effort during home schooling.
I’ve watched how others store the vacuum fodder. A friend has the largest Sistema box she could find and it all sits in there like a really poorly poured vile of coloured souvenir sand.
Another friend zip locks each set into individual bags. At lockdowns like these I seethe with envy over her forethought.
I had thought that the more we made, the easier the other (harder, fiddlier, filled with bespoke pieces) sets would be. I was so wrong. The more we made, the more we cannibalised other sets. Need a long flat piece? Got one. It’s red. This entire set is black. Not to worry, bung it in. That move would haunt me as we then created the red set (who even knows what it was) and I can see that long flat red piece tidily sitting in the chassis of the white caravan…way too integral to the structure of the thing for extraction to even be considered. F**k. “It’s ok Mum, I like it rainbow.” Thank f**k.
Necessity is the mother of invention. My parental wins are not so lofty. I am the mother of children who came up (by themselves!) with a chop-shop inspired scheme that if there’s two (reconstructed, quasi-Frankenstein) cars and only six wheels (out of a billion in the box) that fit them - then one car goes on blocks while the other car loans it two wheels.
