childhood was full of great times and tons of excitement. My life really sped up when I was four. The Game Cube© was just coming out with all sorts of great games such as, Mario Cart, Luigi’s Mansion, Zelda, and Super Smash Bros. We were moving out of Stillwater to the town of Amery, Wisconsin on a lake where I would spend most of my time in the summer swimming and skiing in what we called a “lake day”. My idea of television was in its prime with Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon dominating the air waves with TV shows such as Jimmy Neutron and the Fairly Odd Parents. My favorite show was the great SpongeBob Squarepants. Then there was the cabin out on Big Butter Nut Lake in the heart of Luck, Wisconsin. My grandparents owned it, and it was my top pick if it was my choice of what to do on a hot summer day. But, I still knew deep down that I had a favorite thing to do. It wasn’t fancy or new. It was probably the most low-tech thing I could have done. It was the spectacular and wonderful world of the basic Lego©.

When I was four, all I asked for, for Christmas was Legos. My parents and other family members, seeing that I was only four, decided not to buy me the large more complex sets and rather spend their money on more “age appropriate,” Lego sets. Some of the sets I received were a mere fifty pieces and I could have them done by lunch on Christmas day. My cousins who were all older than me would be playing their video games or tossing around their new football, but not me. I was locked into those little sets trying to finish them as fast as possible to prove to my parents that I was ready and prepared to take on the bigger and better sets that were out there waiting for me.

I craved better. My parents at first were confused looking down at their four year old child with doubt as he asked for Lego sets that were recommended for kids’ age 12+. All I did was ask for a chance. Finally. On my fifth birthday I received what I had asked for, it was a large set made of more than 500 pieces. My birthday was the 16th of June, and by the 19th it was correctly finished with no help. There I stood, hardly able to write my own name, but there I was completing a Lego© set that was made for kids ages 12+.

That same year for Christmas I received two different large Lego© sets. One was from my grandparents on my mother’s side. And the other was from my parents. The one my grandparents gave me was one I had asked for; it was a police station. I really wanted it because it had 12 different Lego© people, and Lego© characters are hard to come by. Also, the station was less a police station and more like a military base. The station had lots of fences and walls along with big spot lights and prison cells. The set my parents gave me I had not asked for but I was shocked. It was the holy grail of all Lego builds: A star destroyer. A star destroyer is from the original first movies in the then trilogy known as Star Wars. It was a large long triangular shaped ship that was entirely gray. It was huge! The normal version is almost four feet long weighing nearly 20 pounds and is made of about 3400 pieces! But my parents knew even I was not ready for that. So, they went to the internet and found it, a star destroyer made in china that was only 1200 pieces and was only about two feet long. The box was covered in Chinese print but I knew what it was the whole time because the Lego insignia style was on the box only in Mandarin and the picture of the star destroyer was made out of Legos. My parents actually first did a strange test using olive oil and some tin foil and light to make sure the blocks weren’t made with lead paint. Thankfully they were not, and I was able to build.

First I built the police station. Since it was over Christmas break I built all of the station in just one day. That was fairly easy because my Lego skills were now very good. The police station was a small, 450 blocks. So, it nothing but a warm up for what was to come next; the star destroyer. There were 43 bags compartmentalizing the build for me. The directions showed bags with numbers on what to use at a given time. The directions showed mostly diagrams of actions not words, making it easy to make without knowing Chinese. Most of the time the diagrams told me to empty three bags and sometimes four. About two weeks later it was finished the longest and biggest build I had ever done. I was still only five years old and this ship weighed five pounds and was about two feet long. It was one of the greatest achievements in my life.

Legos continued to dominate my free time. I moved around the different styles of Legos such as, Castles, Star Wars, Vikings, and Mars Missions. By the age of eight I had a kingdom that would rival any Lego place I could think of. At my peak; when I was eight, I had over 120 figures in my kingdom. My rapid expansion was also helped because my brother loved to help me and watch me build Legos, so he would also ask for Lego sets for his birthdays and for Christmas.

When I was the age of twelve, Legos were still lots of fun to me. But, sports and friends and the Playstation3© were now taking control of my life. My parents weren’t as big fans of the new things I was doing, especially my new PlayStation3© with Call of Duty Black Ops. In a last ditch effort to get me back into Legos and not this new so called “crap’” that I was into now. For thanksgiving a holiday when there is never presents my parents gave me a gift. A complex Lego set even I wasn’t ready for. A 2000 piece medieval village consisting of 6 houses and a market. I was stunned and filled with joy. What made the set so complex is it gave a picture of a large piece to the build or a section from many different angles and that was all you got for directions. No step by step directions. Instead you had to almost guess and check what pieces went where. The parts ranged from 30 to 100 pieces and were time consuming to build. I spent months building the village, bit by bit. Finally I was on the biggest challenge of the build. The large headmasters hut. I would say it was about 500 pieces in itself. To top things off, the direction only showed three parts to it meaning the parts were all around 180 plus pieces making them incredibly difficult. The first one was made of small pieces and was relatively easy. Then came disaster…

My mom was having friends over for a weekend get together. Both women were moms, each with two daughters. At the time, each mom had one at the age of 6 and another at the age of 9. I was away at a friend’s house when I heard they were even coming. I didn’t think much of it and enjoyed my time with my friends. But, on returning home I met a sad sight. All the building of my kingdom looked like they had bed destroyed by Godzilla. My most recent project the village with only two different sections yet to be built, was hit the worst. The village wasn’t only destroyed, it was completely gone. The only thing I could find were the people that came with the set in amongst the other ruins. Being I was much older, I first went to my mom and told her what had happened. She said not to worry and tried her best to fix things by asking why and where they put the rest of my village. They replied with only the shrug of the shoulders. Still to this day, I find little bits and pieces strewn around in closets and in cupboards or drawers.

The loss of my kingdom really ended my liking for the small bricks we call Legos. The towers and structures that survived stand on a coffee table in the far corner of our living room to this day. Under that table is a large tub full of random Lego's from my kingdom. All full of oranges from mars and greens from the Vikings. All the tiny pieces from the star destroyer fill the plastic tub with a dull gray tone to it. The cruelty of four harmless girls still angers me to this day. My toy that was in the deepest best place in my heart was forgotten; lost in a world of sports, school, friends, and video games.