By Giuseppe Palmer, staff writer
When I think of my childhood, one of the first things that comes to mind is LEGO.
My first introduction to LEGO came when I was 5 years old and my Dad came home from a garage sale on our block with a huge trash bag full of assorted LEGO bricks. It was love at first sight. I saw characters I recognized from movies and some I didn’t recognize, but more importantly I saw the potential possibilities that LEGO could bring.
For years, all of my free time and thought was consumed by LEGO.
At first, improvising and creating my own stories and scenes was my favorite thing to do. My brother and I would organize all the random characters we had into huge, epic battles that stretched all throughout our room. We would try to build the most powerful spaceships or swords we could with the bricks we had, and then use them to duel. The possibilities were endless with LEGO and that’s why I loved them so much. You really could do anything with your collection and because of that, I could play LEGOs for hours without getting bored.
My mom was smart enough to organize all our pieces by color and category, so that cleanup and setup were easy for us. We had plastic drawers filled with legos that took up the length of an entire wall of our room.
As I got older, I became more interested in LEGO sets from some of my favorite franchises like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and more. I saved up money and even stole some from my parents in order to buy the newest and coolest sets.
My favorite sets to collect were Star Wars. I had all kinds of ships, speeders, and minifigures, but the one I truly wanted was the Death Star. It came with 22 characters and 3,800 pieces, and I absolutely had to have it. But unfortunately for 6 year old me, it was $400. I knew my parents would never buy it for me, so I took it into my own hands to save up for it by pinching all the dollar bills my parents left around the house until eventually I accrued close to $200. My parents had no idea, of course, until one day I showed my best friend my stash of cash and he convinced me to return it all. That was the end of my dream of having the Death Star.
Even though I never managed to get the Death Star, I was happy with the other LEGOs I had and it never got in the way of the joy they brought me. I continued to be obsessed all throughout elementary school.
However, I continued to grow up, and gradually I fell out of love with legos and more in love with video games and Nerf guns and other things like that. I’ve always loved LEGO and I always will; even today I jump at any rare opportunity to build a small set or make a fun ship, but it will never be the same as it was when I was younger.
