AFOL, "The Lego Movie" and "Les Miserables"

Here I confess:  I am an AFOL, also known as an Adult Fan of Lego.  I never would have been an AFOL if it wasn't for the Boy.

I never owned a lego set until I was 40 when my son bought me a yellow brick beach house for my birthday.  Since then, I've acquired the Medieval Village, the Friends Tree House and two sets with Johnny Depp minifigures, one from Pirates of the Caribbean and one from The Lone Ranger.

Jack Sparrow visits Olivia in her tree house.  He brings a rose.  She greets him with a sword.

My brother had legos growing up, but that was back in 1970s before the many of fancy sets with instructions came out.  Imagination fueled building, with a few pictures on the box for inspiration.  When I was in Ohio a while back, my son got out my brother's legos and there were still whirligigs my brother had built as a child.  I built houses with a door, windows and a roof.  I was not inspired, and building the same house over and over again got old.

The Boy took a liking to legos when he was a toddler.  He started with Duplos, bringing his creations to his sister's bus stop to show the other moms.  My favorite was the Stomp Drop Rocket.  It looked like a barge with a ladder.  Color patterns didn't matter.  He used whatever block was closest to his hands.  I had bought a generic box of the standard sized lego bricks for my daughter when she was four.  She had as much interest in lego as she did with Thomas the Tank Engine: almost none.  The Boy started playing with these smaller bricks when he was four.  His first set was the Airport Fire Truck, followed by the City Fire Station.  Six years later, he has tens of thousands of legos.  I am always surprised at how many bricks he has, until I realize he has gotten legos for every birthday, Christmas and random gift since 2007.  Toss in a few eBay purchases of ten pounds of random legos, and it adds up quickly.  The number of hours he has played with the bricks is almost as large as the number of bricks we own.

The Lego Room in a typically untidy state.

Given our passion for the little plastic bricks from Denmark, I took the Boy to see The Lego Movie last weekend.  I loved and appreciated the movie more than he did.  Unfortunately, I could relate to the villain.  Only once did I get out The Kragle.  One of his first lego sets was Sandy's Rocket from SpongeBob.  The Boy loved to carry the rocket around, but the fragile base kept falling apart.  Out came the super glue.  At the time, he didn't know it is considered extremely bad form--almost sacrilege--to glue legos together.  Now when he finds those old pieces, he looks at me with disbelief, and I am ashamed.

Since my supergluing lego faux pas, I've come around.  I started playing with legos simply as a way to connect with my son and spend time with him.  If I didn't, I would understand nothing about his world. While I am not the most creative builder, I have found my ways participate. I am his piece finder when he gets a new set and tidy up the lego room occasionally.  I also sort his legos by shape, making it easier for him to find the right piece when he builds.  (I find sorting legos a great way to relax.)  I keep all of his building instructions in a special place.  Instead of free building, I use the old instructions and rebuild sets.  Sometimes I'll look up building instructions on Lego.com for sets we don't own and build those.

"Why can't you just free build?" the Boy asks.  "Do you always need instructions?"

One day, to pull me out of my instruction filled world, he said we would have a free build contest.

"We get one hour and we each have to build a ninja house," he said.  My daughter would be the judge. We checked the clock, and started.  My ninjas had a Zen garden, with a brick wall surrounding the property filled with trees, plants and a gravel walkway.  I had better colors and bricks to work with, so the house was a bit more stylish than those I made in 1978.  Otherwise, I was back in my comfort zone, creating a rectangle shaped building with doors and windows.  I don't remember what the Boy's house looked like.  I think it had flames and was tricked out with an arsenal of lego weapons.  Mine had transparent bricks making a stained glass window.  My daughter declared me the winner.  The Boy was proud.

My daughter is generally not a fan of lego.  She got an Aqua Raiders set years ago.  She built it once, and that was it.  I took the kids to dinner last fall and we were discussing lego sets.

"The only lego set I would want would be Les Miserables," she said.  She is a huge fan of the musical.

This got us thinking.  In the car ride home, we brainstormed several scenes from the musical that could be made out of lego:

• The ship where Jean Valjean is a slave
• The Bishop's home with silver candesticks
• The factory that Jean Valjean owns and where Fantine works
• Jean Valjean lifting the cart off the Fauchelevant with Javert watching
• The Thenardiers' Inn
• The Barricade
• The Sewers of Paris
• Javert Jumping off the Bridge
• The Wedding

I loved the idea.  When we got home, the Boy and I started making the Thenardiers' Inn.  I had big dreams of making the several scenes from the musical and novel and submitting them to BrickCon at the Seattle Center in October.  I poached the windows from the Medieval Village, a structure which had yet to be taken apart.  The Boy started on the outside structure of the Inn.  I free-built a fireplace, and the Boy added light bricks.  We found minifigures for Jean Valjean, Cosette, Javert and the Thenardiers.  We didn't quite finish the Inn, and the Boy and his friends remodeled it several times before it was compete.  Some of the changes we not authorized.  Several of the patrons of the inn were regurgitating their meals, others were urinating.  Days after we started, the Inn caught on fire, was bombed, and looked like it was part of the barricade.

Which brings me to my conflict.  Should I commandeer the collection to build Les Miserables?  He has tens of thousands of legos.  Would he miss the ones I would use?  Should I let the Boy be a boy, and have his room?  Or should I get my time?  I've been his lego enabler for years, supporting his addiction.  When do I get to build?

Why am I so grumpy and greedy about this?  Shouldn't I be a gracious parent, letting him enjoy his toys?  It is complicated.  In this case, the parent is the pupil and the teacher is the child.  Doesn't the mentor need to let his student blossom, find her own way, create her own mini-masterpiece?  It is much harder when your protege is your mom.

My son always says he wants to do something important, to make a difference in the world.  At times, he is frustrated that he is only a ten year old boy, without the power to change the world.  He has made a difference.  It might not be an epic change, but he has taught me something new.

Is he ready to share his studio for the sake of his student?  That remains to be seen.  While he may be a great teacher, he is, after all, a ten year old boy.