Children and destruction
I'm not that great with children. I don't have that in-built sense that some people have that tells them when it's the time to pick the buggers up by their feet and swing them around small living rooms, or when doing the exact same thing will result in crying and me looking like some kind of child swinging mentalist. My brother, bless him, can walk into a room full of children (our extended family has a veritably never ending supply of them) and within minutes be covered in the things, they love him so. Despite me trying to say all the right things and give an outward appearance of being a loveable uncle-y, play-fighting, coin-behind-your-ear type figure, children generally regard me with the kind of suspicion adults have for dieticians and Jehovah's Witnesses.
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So imagine my delight when the current Mrs Handybread's nephews, now 6 and 4 respectively, seemed to take a liking to me! This was at a time when making a very good impression with her family was the number one priority, and the two boys, who I was secretly dreading meeting, decided that I was cool (I liked star wars too). Oh what fun we had playing light saber battles and being daleks (I make a very good dalek, I am told). All was going splendidly until... the lego incident.

I love lego, have done all my life. I recently found a treasure trove of lego at my parents house, so the first thing I did was up-end it all over a towel on the floor (to make it easy to put back in the box, obviously) and spend five hours making a the most awesomest spaceship base ever. It had a very sophisticated gun turret defence system and everything.. I'm 24.

But ANYWAYS, I was delighted to learn that the kids loved lego too, and had their own (quite impressive) collection. Eager to showcase my (new found) bon homie with kids (and simultaneously impress the possibly in-laws) I agreed to look after them at one of the family's dinner parties, by entertaining them with my lego prowess.

All was going well, it was just me and the two of them, all the guests (20 or so, canapes and the like) are upstairs, we're getting on like a house on fire. We've made a castle out of lego to rival Colditz, I've put lots of effort into it - you know how it is, the kids are more interested in chucking lego figures at each other - so I've spent ages making this castle, it has a defence system (yes, castles as well as spaceship bases need defence systems, trust me), moats, everything.

Then, the youngest one gets this gleam in his eyes, and that's just about the time I remember that the one unifying drive behind all children (okay, maybe just boys) is the love of destruction - the look on his four year old face as he ripped one of the walls (plus crenellations) from my lego castle and used it to beat into individual blocks the entire thing is something I don't think I will ever forget. That is, until I have some children of my own. I have a feeling I may have to get used to it.

The worst thing about that night was the fact that after laying waste to my hours-long creation in a couple of minutes, the bugger realised that this might be trouble for him (especially seeing that he must have noticed the despair in my eyes), so decided to pre-empt the situation by running upstairs and declaring to the (very packed) room above that I had just broken his castle. Cue Mrs Handybread coming downstairs to find me practically in tears, sat cross-legged amongst the wreckage of my destroyed lego fortress, all semblage of uncle-y-ness lost. The kids had long since escaped, but were subsequently hunted down after setting fire to a car and killing next door's cat. As I said, I'm not very good with children...
(fox_handybread, Wed 23 Apr 2008, 23:50, 1 reply)

I used to sit and make random models...
... whilst my dad used to actually follow the book you were given with the lego.

I was 4. He was 32.

He made me destroy countless models, all so he could build the ones in the book.

I got my own back though, we went to Legoland when I was about 6 years old on a coach trip with most of his workforce, and there kids.In the place where you make models I started to make one of my own random ones. One of the helpers came over and asked why I didn't make one of the ones in the book, and I said very loudly in front of everyone, "Daddy never lets me. He always makes the models out of the book, and makes me take apart my ones to get the right pieces."

Funnily enough, a few months later at christmas, Mom bought us seperate, identical sets of Lego Technic. :-D
(Cluckles, Thu 24 Apr 2008, 2:34, closed)