Goodbye, Lego.

When I was home for the holidays, I finally told my mother that she should go ahead and get rid of some of my old toys.

She’s been keeping all sorts of toys and such from my childhood for such a long time because I never have the room (nor the inclination) to take posession of them all.  I have tonka trucks, and matchbox cars, laser tag, and lots and lots of legos.

I’m keeping the matchbox cars… especially the ones from Lesney, England.  Those were always my favorites.

Anyway, she lives in a neighborhood with some newer families.  Families with children.  Across the street there is a new couple just getting on their feet and they have a young son who is just in 1st grade.  And as luck would have it, he absolutely LOVES lego.  My mother asked the couple if they might perhaps like a few lego sets.  And with the economy being what it is, the pair was more than grateful to take my old lego sets so they’d have more to put under the tree this year.

The kid is gonna make out like a ruddy bandit!

Here are some of the kits I’m parting with…

Some of these are expert builder sets, some are just shit I built out of plain blocks.

This was my absolute FAVORITE lego thing… EVER.  I LOVED this space ship.  We had many adventures (and battles) together.  I blew this ship up, and reassembled it so many times, that I was able to build it from memory after I had lost all the directions.

This is the first “expert builder” set I ever got.  The helicopter rotor turns with the hand crank, and the steering “sticks” change the pitch of the blades.  It’s all very fancy.  But not as fancy as…

This was my SECOND expert builder set.  This car is like a foot and a half long.  The steering wheel works the front wheels, and the rear wheels actually turn the pistons over in the engine block!  What’s more, the gear shift knob actually shifts between two different gears, low and high.

SO insanely complex, and actually sorta shows you how rack and pinion steering and pistons and shit work in an engine.

Sigh.

My parents thought the “space lego” sets were excessive, so they weren’t ready to buy me any “medieval” sets.  That was far too extravagant.  Plus I was growing “out” of legos at that point.  But it didn’t stop me from making my own castle (replete with arrow slits and drawbride) out of my basic blocks sets.

But I didn’t stop there:

Not content with just a regular monolithic structure, I hinged the backside, and built sort of a “barbie dream castle”.  With stairs and a trap door in the top floor.  Yeah, I was a geeky child.

But GOD I had so much fun playing with these simple little blocks!  Being an only child, I sorta had to make my own fun a lot of the time.  And Legos really helped in that respect.

I would sit in my room, think about what I wanted to build, design the structure in my mind, and then begin crafting it.  I spent HOURS building cities, and space ships, and boats, and trucks, and racecars, and creatures… gosh, anything and everything I could think of.

I was never lonely with my legos and I remember the time spent with them very fondly.

Now all of these (and a couple more sets not pictured, as well as a huge bag of lego basic blocks) are going to this kid across the street so that he’ll have a very merry Christmas.  I truly hope he gets as much enjoyment out of them as I did!

I think I was meant to wait until this year before giving them up, too.  So that they would go to a good home and not just into a Goodwill bin.  And although I’m just the teensiest bit sad to let go, I’m okay with it.

It’s time to work on building other things now.