Farewell to Childhood - a guest post by the Balloonatic
Even though I am in my early fifties, I have still clung to parts of my childhood. To the things which brought me joy and happiness, through good times and bad. To the love that I passed on to my son, and which has been a big part of his childhood. I am speaking of my love of Lego.
Lego has been an iconic part of many childhoods throughout the world. I remember when my parents bought my brother and sister and I our first sets – huge boxes of mixed bricks, with ideas for things we could build, but the freedom to let our creativity run wild. My younger brother built race cars while my sister and I built houses and furnishings and figured out how to build small animals – horses and sheep and so many things. I still have some of those original Legos. They were like a building block that carried me into adulthood. A solid foundation. And now that foundation is crumbling and shattering into pieces that will never be the same.
I admit, there were years where my love of Lego was not as evident. Going through late teens into my twenties, I wasn't really buying Lego or building it. But then I began a career as a church worker, and part of that was working with kids and young families. I still remember having a family over to visit, and bringing out the box with my childhood Lego for the kids to play with, only to have a young man of five or six look at me solemnly and tell me that my Lego sucked. Apparently Lego had evolved and changed, and my old bricks had become outdated. So when I would go to the store, and found a good sale, I began buying Lego again, investing in some Bionicle kits to appeal to these savvy young builders I was working with.
One of the most exciting things about having my son was being able to introduce him to my love of Legos. While we started with Duplos, as soon as he was old enough to not swallow the parts, I quickly moved him on to my little bricks. They were presents for every birthday and Christmas, and we would buy sets for him to build in the backseat of the car when we went on long road trips. He has Lego Advent Calendars from every year of his life. When he outgrew the City set, he moved on to the Star Wars and the City Advent Calendars were bought for me. Every day in Advent, for so many years, we would have our daily build and post the photos on social media. Almost every May the 4th I would be ordering kits and hiding them in the house until December for his birthday and Christmas. Santa even started to bring me Lego Holiday Village sets every year, and my son started buying me Lego for my birthday and Christmas as well. Half of my attic was converted to a Lego building station. We would buy everything from the smallest kits to the largest, including the Lego Titanic – the biggest kit they had made to date, combining two of my son's loves in one huge box.
But now, while my love of Lego will still continue, my purchasing days are over. Lego has changed in ways that I can no longer support. I wasn't thrilled when they came out with the "Lego Friends" series to appeal to young girls, because, as a girl, I already found Lego appealing, but I understood that they were trying to stay with the times and reach a new market. When they came out with a Lego Minifigure LGBT rainbow set, it made me pause; but I closed my eyes and ignored it, because I loved Lego so much and didn't want to give it up. Recently however, Lego has gone further. They have created a "Dreamz" line with "Gender Neutral" sets. And I have to ask myself why? What does Lego have to do with gender? Almost every kit has mini-figures with both boys and girls. What is a gender neutral figure? They are neutering our childhood, our toys and our children. Literally. They are contributing to societal psychosis where girls are no longer allowed to be girls, and heaven forbid that boys be allowed to be boys. Our childhood loves, and our children themselves are being mutilated to conform to the craziness that is pervading society today.
So now, enough is enough. Every person has to find that point where they, like Luther did over 500 years ago say, "Here I stand. I can do no other." This is my standing point, my line in the sand that I will not cross. It is time to say goodbye to Lego and farewell to this important part of my childhood. I pray that some day they will return to sanity. That they will put children's lives and mental health above profits and temporary fads in society. That they will once again become a foundation of childhood and teach children the joy of building things rather than tearing them down. Until then, I will retreat to my attic, to the blocks and sets that brought us so much joy and refuge from the troubles in life, and remember the good times. The love of a toy that wasn't tied to political correctness, but was about the simplicity of imagination and creation.
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