Lego is great
There was a kid at my school called Daniel. Daniel (never Dan) was a good friend of mine, but didn't have a lot of friends as he was a shy lad who kept himself to himself. As his friend, I used to be invited around his house for dinner sometimes.

Now, we were about 12 at the time. Around the time this set came out: lego.wikia.com/wiki/6973_Deep_Freeze_Defender

Daniel had saved up all his pocket money and got his grandad to chip in so that he could buy it and loads of other sets in the range. Added to his already large collection of Lego, he now had the means to build something absolutely massive. He asked me what I was doing on Saturday. I wasn't busy.

When I arrived on Saturday, I found that Daniel had done technical drawings across several sheets of paper, along with inventories of all the parts needed. We spent several hours assembling a gigantic ship worthy of the Star Wars universe. It used the outline of the original ship, but added a cargo bay large enough to hold two large tanks. It also had two detachable fighters attached to the side wings. On top of this, he had added totally unnecessary (aesthetically speaking) space inside set aside for fuel tanks, cooling apparatus for the engines, fuel lines, etc. He had really thought this through.

At about half-five, shortly before I was going to have to head home for my tea, we had got the thing finished to Daniel's satisfaction. We (very gingerly) picked it up and carried it downstairs to show to his family. Mum, Dad, and younger brother Chris were watching TV in the lounge, and were slightly bemused by Daniel and I entering holding a massive spaceship. Daniel began to explain it and Chris chipped in "Lego is for kids. I don't even play with Lego! Why have you got to be so weird?". Dad said "Well, he does have a point son. You're twelve. Why aren't the two of you out playing football or riding bikes or something?". Mum just looked a bit embarrassed.

Daniel was moody for the rest of the week, and never invited me around to play with Lego again. Instead, we did go out on bike rides and play football with other kids. A few years later, we went our separate ways to Sixth Form College and then University, but we always kept in touch, and I know that Daniel still kept all his Lego, and even found some like-minded people at University who liked building stuff in their spare time. Now with beer and pizza and computer-aided-design.

Daniel is now a PhD in Engineering and gets paid large amount of money to mess around building cool things on a much larger scale, when not teaching. No one ever takes the piss out of him for being too old to play with Lego.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Fri 25 Oct 2013, 10:08, 1 reply)

They do.
I'm doing it right now.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Fri 25 Oct 2013, 11:33, closed)