So there I was, surrounded by a group of professionals.
At first there was a reason to be intimidated. Everyone in that room had more experience. The only way I was going to stand out was if I did something wrong. It was almost as if I had been set up to fail.
Outside of a few sessions with my nieces and nephews, the world of Legos had long since passed me by. While the professionals in the room were only in kindergarten through eighth grade, that’s the prime age to be working with Legos. This, after all, was the After School Lego Club at the Concord Public Library. Some of the best Lego builders in the city had graced those tables.
It wasn’t a competition by any stretch of the imagination, but with my creation set to be displayed with the rest of my fellow club members until their next meeting on the second Thursday in January, there was a lot of pressure to perform. It was like that time I had a dream about auditioning for a role on Modern Family.
Luckily for me, the theme for the afternoon was constructing a gingerbread house from a bucket of mixed Legos. Much like my drawing skills, building a Lego house was right up my alley.
I had envisioned that the library had somehow figured out how to make Legos out of gingerbread, but much to my chagrin, there was no gingerbread to be found. It’s too bad, because I was hungry, and nothing beats gingerbread during the holiday season. Good thing I didn’t try to eat one of those brown blocks.
But once I shook off my initial disappointment, I was ready to go. Instead of sitting there and trying to figure out just how long each wall should be and how tall my house should stand, I just started to build.
If you’ve never been to the club, it’s a bit of a free for all. There are buckets of loose Legos at each of the five tables, and anything is up for grabs. And with a nearly full house at the start of the hour-long building session, each moment could mean the difference between getting all the pieces that you need and being left out.
I wanted to stick with the holiday theme by using the traditional Christmas colors of red, green and white blocks. Since I immediately noticed that there were a lot more red and white blocks than green, I made the decision to build the structure out of candy cane colors and use the green as an accent. Look at that, one building class and I’m already using the lingo.
While it seemed as though there would be plenty of red and white blocks to complete the outside structure, that was not the case. Being the quick thinker that I am, I started to hoard as many of the colored two-wide blocks as I could, and instead of my house mimicking a traditional candy cane, it turned into one of those fruity ones with a wide range of colors and a delicious flavor. (The candy canes, not my Lego house.)
Early on I found a purple door, but all the windows were gone. Boy, are those kids quick. And since no one would actually be living in the house, at least as far as I knew, I decided to just leave a few open spaces to provide my fake gingerbread family’s view to the outside world.
The walls were the easy part. But the roof was going to make or break my design. I had to construct it in a way so it went up and in, while not compromising the integrity of the structure. It wasn’t easy, but my will to be the best 33-year-old builder in the class helped me persevere.
Then it just came down to the details. Early in my rummaging through the buckets, I found a tree and chair. The fir went to the left of my house, while the chair, with my version of Santa, went to the right, complete with a basket of “toys.”
I added a few lights along the edge of the roof and the finishing touches were complete. After taking a peek and a few pictures of the other houses, I can’t complain about what I was able to accomplish in one hour. It may not have been the best one (thanks to the kid who constructed Santa’s sleigh on his roof), but it certainly didn’t stand out as the worst.
Who knows, maybe someday I will become a full-time Lego builder. But for now, I’ll leave it to the professionals.
