Legos

The toy I remember playing with in my youth was my extensive collection of Lego building blocks. My collection was one that stretched a few generations. I had my uncle's old Legos, they were faded and dirty and sometimes didn't fit quite right with my newer pieces. He might have even gotten them when he lived in Europe, before they made their way over seas to the United States.

Lego bricks were first made by a Danish toymaker named Ole Kirk Chrstiansen, who specialized in carved wooden toys. Soon, he began producing toys made from plastic and in 1949, the Lego brick as we know it today was perfected and released to the public. The name Lego is derived from the Danish phrase 'leg godt', which means 'play well'.

Another part of my collection was the big tub of bricks that my parents had gotten me as a birthday present. There were hundreds of different sized pieces, and I remember trying to stack them into shapes that resembled towering buildings or non-aerodynamic spaceships.

Then there were the Lego sets that I started amassing later down the road. These always had a theme to them. The one I remember most vividly is the Lego Castle drawbridge I got when I was very young. I remember it came with two knights who rode little Lego horses, with swords and a bow and arrows. It also included a wizard, who as I remember lived under the drawbridge with his friend: a Lego skeleton. The most exciting inclusion in this particular set was a Lego King, replete with a golden crown and a not-exactly-flowing vinyl cape. I never did get a castle to go with my drawbridge, but I do remember building some of my own with the bricks I already had. The multi-colored castles of my imagination stood in stark contract to the black and brown drawbridge that I had built with the aide of an instruction booklet.

Another memory I have is of the gigantic Lego tower I once built to house my collection of Lego mini-figures. It was easily the largest model I would ever build, the highlight of my career, reaching at least halfway to the ceiling of my room. Each floor housed a mini-figure and some block-y furniture. The bottom level had a stage where the leader of my Lego building could address his constituents and a Lego band could play.

That tower stayed in my room for quite some time, but eventually the came where I had to take it apart. Brick by brick it went back into my plastic tub of Legos. I recall not being too happy about having to destroy my masterpiece, but in retrospect, I was merely making it possible for yet another grand creation to spring to life from those same plastic bricks. Maybe someday I'll build another tower that will put my old one to shame.