Here's one of the things I did this
past weekend (aside from losing body parts to the cold)--
What—you always knew I was a 12-year
old at heart, right?
8-)
The Lego space shuttle I spent an hour
or so constructing Sunday was actually a Christmas gift from
Loraine's nephews & niece. They know I'm space geek, so they
always get me something related to spaceflight. One year it was an
astronaut cookbook; another, it was a package of Apollo-Soyuz
cigarettes in a display case (surely, one of the most bizarre gifts
I've even been given). This year, it was the Lego space shuttle, a
gift that Loraine says made me squeal when I opened it.
Believe it or not, I never really
played with Legos as a kid, so I had no idea what to expect. It was,
however, a 200-piece three dimension puzzle that challenged both my
spacial skills and my aptitude for handing really small pieces of
plastic without dropping them on the floor (spoiler alert—that's an
aptitude I need to work on). I was actually stunned by the
complexity of the project. The box said it was for 7 to 12-year
olds; if that's the case, I'm pretty sure 7-year olds today are a LOT
smarter than I was a 7-year old.
I'm just saying.
I also walked away from the project
with admiration for the engineers who design these toys. Not only
could I built a space shuttle from the parts, but if I wanted to I
could take it apart and use the pieces to built a moon buggy, or a
Mars surface crawler. That means that each piece of plastic had to
serve three different purposes for three different projects. I have
no idea how long it would've taken the Lego engineers to put the plan
for the “toys” together, but I'm guessing it was quite a while.
And I'm also guessing that a lot of brain power was devoted to the
project, as well.
I guess there are toys, and then there
are “toys”. That's a difference I learned Sunday while putting
together my Lego space shuttle. And I also figure that, should I
ever decide to play with Legos again, even at my advanced age, it'll
be okay.
After all, look at all the work that
goes into it!
No comments:
Post a Comment