I recently tweeted the essence of an exchange between me and Demetrius (my five year old), pictured above. (In case it's not showing up, I wrote "Me: Come on. Put your toys down and come eat food. My 5yo:" and then a gif of Wesley from The Princess Bride shouting "Death first!")
Demetrius is…insistent. I mean, the kid is five, so I understand where he's coming from. The thing about him is his guile. He'll find ways of manipulating others so that he can have toys. He'll ignore important things (putting on shoes, buckling up in the car, eating food, going to the bathroom) because he's so engaged with the molded plastic that has most recently caught his attention, and he'll get snagged by the strangest things. Most often the pink stuff (his favorite color--he was hording bottles of glue at the Office Max we visited yesterday, stuffing his arms full of pink-and-glitter glue; he doesn't even use glue), but if it's a toy, he's interested. Take his birthday, for example. He had, the week or so before the celebration, realized that Wendy's has kids meals that include toys in them. Guess where we went for his birthday dinner? Yup. And did he eat the food? He ate the Frosty and a couple of French fries, then let the chicken nuggets we'd purchased get all cold and thrown away. Why eat when one can play? But what I mean by guile is the way he plays me. I have an entire box of toys from my childhood and teenage years. Nine-tenths of it is somehow Spider-Man related, but there are a couple of G.I. Joes and Transformers in the lot. They're "old" toys according to time; for my kids, they're a treasure trove of novel things. Since I'm a sentimental old coot, I don't really want to have my toys be ruined or lost--an entirely different topic to discuss--so I let Demetrius "check out" toys one at a time. If he wants a new one, he has to return the previous. Demetrius, however, takes this deal very seriously. He'll play with a toy of mine for a number of days, and then he'll at last bring it to me and say, with a tinge of remorse in his voice, "Can I get a new one?" It does take a bit of finagling to get the box down, so it sometimes happens that he wants to trade but we haven't the time. He won't, however, forget. If he thinks he needs a toy to play with in the car (despite the fact that the area around his car seat is littered, like the dead leaves of an autumnal orchard, with toys all about him) and I refuse to let him run back to the house to get one, he will cry. He will pout. He will have injured feelings. This sentiment will stick with him for miles as we trundle toward whatever destination we need to. Recently, he borrowed a Power Rangers toy from a neighbor in my mom's neighborhood. He carried the thing around everywhere I would let him, and the sadness written over his face when we had to return it? Oh, man--you would have thought that I'd just killed his dog* or something. He mourned. Yes, precious, he wept to be so alone… On one level, I get it. I have deep attachments to things and I will sometimes put my better self-interest at jeopardy to do/have those things. What gets me about Demetrius, though, is how monomaniacal he can be. While his True Love™ will probably always be video games, he, of all three kids, will be the first to abandon electronics if a plastic toy catches his eye. Yes, he will whine, moan, and pitch a fit if I take away his video games prematurely, but the kid will actually put down a controller if he gets an itch that only molded plastic can scratch. And good for him, says I. If we had more people willing to gain the benefits of imaginative play, we'd probably have a healthier, happier populace. Until they remember that their childhood dogs died. Then there'd just be sadness, I guess. --- * He doesn't have a dog. We don't do pets in my household, which is one of many dull ways in which I'm gently traumatizing my children and ensuring future therapists of ample things to discuss in their expensive sessions together. The multiplication of certain toys is a near-guarantee for any middle-class family: Stuffed animals, for one. These easy-squeezy toys reproduce like rabbits--some of them actually are rabbits, whether they're Velveteen or no. Parents don't need to buy a single stuffed animal for their children, as their acquisition and reproduction happens seemingly overnight. By the time a family sports three kids, there will have been multiple purges of vapid-eyed animals, dirty-hand smeared dolls, and But-It's-My-Favorite inspired shapes (yes, shapes), yet still will the parents' home be home to an entire ecosystem worth of these stuffed representations of nothing true to nature. There is no cure for this, as neutering a stuffed animal is the same as stitching it up after an unfortunate crotch tear, and the best new parents can hope for is the strength to cull the herd whenever it becomes unmanageable. Another example? LEGO sets. Okay, to start off with a pedantic acknowledgment, the way the toy company that makes the bricks considers the naming is that LEGO is an adjective, meaning it describes a noun. So there are LEGO (yes, all caps) bricks, LEGO sets, LEGO minifigs, and on and on until one runs out of nouns. Therefore, describing the things in a collective form as LEGOs* is grammatically unsound and unapproved by those who make them. And despite the temptation to add the s and let it go at that, the pedantic part of myself can't really let me perpetuate a solecism, so get ready to see a lot of LEGO ____. Anyway, LEGO sets are far worse than stuffed animals at spontaneous generation. They are the ex nihilo manifestations of a child's toy room. Much as seeds planted in good soil will bring forth fruit, so, too, will a LEGO stud, left in the carpet, lead to a sprouting of mismatched colors, variously chewed bricks--and, sometimes, even plastic fruit. They will acne a bedroom faster than telling a pubescent teen that Prom is coming up. They create entire constellations of potential foot damage if they're given even a marginal space in which to sprout. They insidiously spread, like the head lice of carpeting, throughout a house. By having children, you have tacitly agreed to let every vacuuming session include the telltale rattle of a previously invisible LEGO item being sucked into the dusty vortex from whose borne no traveler returns--and woe to the parent who refuses to reclaim the foul thing from within the vacuum's hungry maw, for there will be weeping, yea, and gnashing of teeth; and the lamentations shall be long and pointed; and the shrieks of the deprived shall echo off the walls of thine abode; yea, and thou shalt swear in thy wrath: This is your fault. If you would just put your LEGOs* away, this never would have happened. Even so. Amen. No parent can recall the purchase of any LEGO set. As part of their ploy to overrun the world with their bricky pieces, LEGO sets activate the "Clark Kent effect": That is, though it is obvious and perfectly clear that Clark Kent's shockingly good looks are the precise same as Superman's, save the glasses, no one can recognize the mild mannered reporter as the Man of Steel. So, too, does the purchase of LEGO sets pass through a sort of veil of forgetfulness that not even intrepid and clever reporters are able to put together as a clear example of causality. Some may claim that they remember giving their children one set or another, but that is not the same thing. Like the Ring of Power, LEGO sets have desires of their own. They will insinuate themselves into the bottom of the shopping cart, cleverly hidden between cold produce and yet another bottle of ibuprofen, only to appear to the parent later, once at home. "Hmm," says the parent, her/his face furrowing in confusion, "I don't remember picking that up. Well, little Colton (which will be pronounced 'Cole-uhn') can have this for his birthday." Thus the nefarious LEGO box, with its on-average-ten-cents-per-piece price tag remains in the home, there to spread and multiply with all the other LEGO bricks that already infest the house. The only hope to stem the brightly-colored flood of choking hazards is to keep them in their boxes. This, of course, is nearly impossible, as the LEGO bricks inside want to get out. This is why they're kept in bags, then the box itself is taped shut: To prevent accidental release in transit. Could you imagine the ecological disaster that would happen to, say, a forest if there were a spill of LEGO sets? It would be like every oil company's past, present, and future, except it would be with toys…which are made from oil. So it's the exact same thing, then. Anyway, these boxes are utilized for the purpose of making the child who receives the LEGO set think that they/she/he is receiving more than is actually there. Much like cold cereal has an explanation that "some settling may occur" and that the box of Honey Bunches of Oats is sold "by weight, not volume", so, too, does the LEGO set have a spacious possession of air within its cardboard boundaries. Were LEGO sets to come in an appropriately proportioned box, thousands of acres of forest would be spared--all the better to spoil with oil spills. Once the seal has been broken and the portals of highly enjoyable Hell crack open, the plastic baggies come out, flopping like engorged jellyfish onto the carpet. The instructions follow suit, slapping the ground like a wet sock, which are then anxiously picked up and opened. In nine cases out of ten, this leads to the ripping of the first page of the instruction manual, which has the type of LEGO set it's designed to help the child build. Therefore, despite any attempts by the parent to keep the LEGO manuals set aside, it's essentially a Sisyphean task, as the instructions are now a "stripped book". The bags are torn open in any order, despite large, unmistakable numbers printed on the outside to facilitate the building of the set. Children set about complaining that they can't find a piece until they entire thing is built. And then, the great culminating joy of LEGO set ownership is over. As rapidly as the previous paragraph ended, so does the LEGO experience. Its entire purpose is to be built amidst the shrieks of wounded siblings who "just want to help" (an impossible task, because building a LEGO set is not that hard) and get a fist in the arm for their troubles. "But," I hear you cry, "the whole point of LEGOs* is to build them! That should be the focus of this essay! They inspire learning, creation, and hands-on play that should not be dismissed. Not only that, but they are cute and have very clever ways of using the bricks that can help the children be similarly cute and clever." Alas, that is only the marketing. LEGO bricks can indeed inspire children to build, explore, create, and imagine more. But they aren't about built LEGO sets; they're about building the LEGO sets. Once the joy of assembling the pieces, feeling their sharp edges against the tips of one's fingers, the satisfying snap as the pieces conjoin, the child is left with what? An assembled LEGO set that will shortly be broken down and dropped into the big bucket of previously grown LEGO bricks and studs. "We'll keep the manual so that you can rebuild it whenever you want," lie the parents. "We believe you," say the children, who are no longer interested in the LEGO set they've built, turning instead to the much more interesting LEGO Video Game where they can pretend to build things out of LEGO bricks. So heed these words, those of you who are yet to contribute to the effort of multiplying and replenishing the world with adorable, stinky progeny: You have no reason to purchase LEGO sets. They will find their way into your home anyway; there's nothing you can do to stop it. Might I suggest that you get in the habit of wearing hard-soled slippers now, if only as a precaution? --- * I cringe. |
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July 2022
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