The First Steps of an Engineer

Several months ago, while visiting the grandparents, we decided to drag out my old ‘Lego’ bins from when I was a kid. Packed into five separate 1 gallon Schwan’s ice cream containers from my youth (living eighteen miles out on the end of the Peninsula, Schwan’s was a great gift to us and I would look forward to their weekly visits so I could get my favorite ‘Rocky Road’ ice cream fix). I have years of my own scavenging of parts, pieces, and kits in there.

I had used to spend many hours, days, and probably even weeks in solitary imaginative engineering as I designed what I felt to be masterpieces. Any situation that I could think of I would create: fighter jets, airports and airplanes, fire trucks and fire stations, limousines, rock concerts, mansions, and many others.

When we brought these out of storage for Joey, I had originally thought he would take a quick look at them and think them boring and move on when compared to the electric toys that modern industry pushes on our children these days (Nintendo WII, Xbox, handheld games, you get the point), but to my surprise, he immediately took to playing with them and spent hours and hours with his newfound hobby.

His first few creations were similar to early designs that I’d done as well: mixed colors, no distinguishable form, missing the logical functionality that our adult minds would require in order to determine function, but to him they were brought to life by his childlike imagination.

“Look Daddy, a fire-boat!” he proclaimed while handing me a red stick with some blue and while blocks on it.

Joey’s uncle Ray spent several hours building a fire-station with him. This amazed Joey and he was so overjoyed that he created a full dozen fire apparatus all with light-bars and wheels to populate this new massive creation now named ‘Pike Fire Station No. 1’ (a throwback to his 4th birthday when Jenny had made a bunch of firefighter shirts for the kids that said ‘Pike Fire Department’).

Joey disappeared for the next two days up in the playroom at the grandparent’s house as he played and imagined scenarios like I used to when I was his age.

As we dragged our son away from his newfound obsession to head towards home, we made mental notes that this might be a really good idea for gift ideas for his upcoming 5th birthday in a couple of weeks.

Somehow a stowaway Lego creation made it home with us (Joey is notorious for being able to sneak something away in a pocket…. I know… I used to as well…) which led to a home based litigation proceeding that ended with a settlement from mom in the form of purchasing a small Lego set for him prior to his birthday.

Again, our son disappeared into a haze of seclusion as he immersed himself into the seduction that envelopes so many youthful engineers like him when playing with Lego’s.

For his 5th birthday, we loaded him with as many Lego and Playmobil sets as we could afford. His friends contributed to the mass with another dozen or so in addition to the ones from Jenny and I. With so many presents, we opted to require that he only open one present per day.

By day 4, he opted to open a very large Lego police station that included station, helicopter, command vehicle, and all terrain vehicles. This one was an incredibly complex undertaking as there were many pieces and parts in the box. The assembly was complicated it was even split into four different phases to help simplify the process.

As we started to pull the bags out and try to make sense of the assembly instructions (Lego does a wonderful job of crafting wordless instructions that require only visual acuity to discern the various steps), I realized that this was the turning point in my son’s life that I needed to put him in charge and just sit back providing the occasional assistance when required. I knew that I could have assembled the whole kit in about an hour, but, the joy in all this is doing it yourself, and so I forced myself to sit co-pilot to Joey on this one.

So many of our children’s toys come with the ‘Some Assembly Required’ statement plastered in a too-small font on some remote underbelly of the packaging that we’ve become numb to the regular package opening and assembly process.

Half of kids’ toys these days come ensnared in some sort of plastic coated wire, tape, or just insanely complex boxing (they say to protect against theft, but who are they fooling? This is some packaging engineer’s job security, right? Does all this work really make us feel like we’ve accomplished something in our children’s eyes to justify its existence in the first place?) that takes amazing amounts of dexterity just to untangle so they can be played with.

In contrast to most “remove from package and play” style tols, Lego and Playmobil place the joy of the toy part in the assembly and part in the play afterwards. This fact was almost lost on me until I realized that I needed to slap my intellect across the face and step back to let the real focus-point of this toy take his rightful position: Joey.

Progress was painfully slow at first as Joey learned to read the instructions and search through the myriad of parts spilled out on the kids table to find the required piece. As he would dig around on the table looking for a part I’d located minutes previous, I learned to hold my opinions and assistance unless asked, and even then I’d only give general guidance without actually resolving the issue to help push his confidence and abilities.

After several hours, he had assembled phase 1 out of 4 and he went to sleep with ATV and Police Gate Center in hand and a huge smile on his face.

Over the course of the next few nights, this pattern repeated itself as subsequent phases slowly found their ways to completion.

A child so perplexed by this fascination even called me at work the other day to ask if I would come home early to help him… I love this kid.

Last night he took the next step, which was to complete an entire assembly unassisted. He started after we had arrived home from work, and in my haste to get dinner ready and clean up the house, I neglected to oversee what he was working on. He disappeared during dinner (after asking to be excused) only to be audibly located an hour later as he announced the completion of a Playmobil Police Station.

“Dad, Dad, you’ve got to come see this!!” my excited son said as he pulled me up the stairs and into the playroom where he had his masterpiece on display.

He is so proud of himself at this point, and I am so proud of him. He really is turning out to be an amazing kid.

jp