Legos

Although I had my fair share of action figures, stuffed animals and video games, not a single toy of that nature created a lasting notion greater than that of a simple Lego block. What better way to spend my youth than to sprawl a whole heap of choking hazards out across my room and search for a tiny piece that matches the figure on the meticulously constructed diagram booklet? Memories. And thinking back on my earliest years as a designer of rectangular cars, blocky pirate fortresses, and chonky alien spacecrafts, I can clearly draw a connection from my toy of choice to my current methodology of design and unwavering analytical skills. But cognitive development aside, Legos never really opened up any great deal social interaction with people my own age. Sure a few friends and I would dump the whole bin upside-down and start building anything conceivable, but the best works always came from a solitary state of mind, where it was just me versus the Legos.

I’m talking about the masterpiece tower that lives in the corner of your room for three months because it’s simply too beautiful to destroy. Also, when following the included directions, there is only really room for one person to work at a time. If more than one person tries to work at once, the result is always the most emotionally involved player doing most of the work, and since I love Legos to death, the involvement scale tips my way more often than not. This directly translates into adulthood when working in groups. People who really need to reach the end result will work as hard as they possibly can in order to get the project to that point. So, even today, I tend to be controlling of a group since I learned early to be very intense about completing any task. I also never misplace anything due to the care I took about accounting for every Lego block I owned.

Despite the lack of teamwork equivalency, playing alone didn’t make me too socially awkward, since many of my favorite things about myself stemmed from the focus. I am quiet in nature, which makes me a good listener, and the repetition of putting models together over and over helped develop an incredible visual memory. These are vital to the way I work on designs—breaking down the composition into smaller ideas and building them up into a final complete work. I also tend to interact with others in a more traditional or formal manner, but is there any other way to draw up a multistep diagram? I realized there is a proper and a wrong way to do something from my interactions with those lengthy, glossy-paged commandments, and the Legos forced me to experience to proper way far more often than the incorrect way.

Following the directions the first time gave me a higher sense of gratification than any freestyle building ever could. I had a hard time being random while isolated, while I could lose a bit of the ordered thought process while playing Legos with friends. Socially, I don’t get along so well with the free-spirited type of people. I believe this is rooted in the type of Lego creations created during social interactions. I would want to make sure every piece was in its proper place and put there in the right sequence, while friends of mine would just stack them up as high as possible before it fell over. What a waste of time, the end result is it falls over—every time. But why not play with someone else who builds the way I must? Those like me would rather just play at home and work alone anyway, so where is the socialization in this scenario? People better just stay out of my Legos and let me make sure everything is in order according to the directions.

Yo-Yos

The giant tub of Legos lives safely in the attic with each set (with all of their pieces) in individual jumbo plastic bags. Being an adult version of myself leaves little time for traditional Lego play, but many of my daily free-time activities have similar characteristics of playing with Legos. I took up playing with yo-yos around the time I graduated from high school. With yo-yos, I can still learn tricks step by step, and even better, I don’t need to be in a group to have fun. A single yo-yo works best with a single person manipulating the string. It’s also a nice comfort knowing that my own head is the only head I have to worry about getting cracked open. The more involved I got into yo-yos, the more and more my learned play behavior took over. I took less to the style of my peers (there are quite a bit of yo-yo enthusiasts), and started to avoid mimicking other styles.

I wanted my style to be the best and uninfluenced by outside sources, so it would adhere to my strict formulated method of trick creation. I isolated myself socially from other people in order to perfect my exclusive style. But isolated playtime made up a great deal of my childhood playtime, it seems perfectly reasonable in adulthood. I suppose that playing with yo-yos is an obvious choice for a person wanting an activity that can be mastered without the aid of a teammate. So my adult play choices greatly reflect my childhood tendencies and the way I interact socially. I tend to avoid large groups and prefer a more intimate interaction where only one thing at a time requires my focus.

All in all, the way I play today against the way I played as a child are hardly different in style, and are only separate in medium. Legos and yo-yos allowed me to develop a quiet mannerism that hides a requirement of perfection and order. I developed an extreme independence that must be met during times of play, which causes me to shy away from group play requiring teams and cooperation. I learned that repetition of smaller tasks builds permanent memories that can be called upon in countless situations involving the completion of larger tasks at hand. My play also helped me to build skills that permeate all the areas of my life, making me more productive and focused on anything requiring my attention. I am grateful for the analytical ability gained from playing with such perfectly crafted, modular toys, even if I means requiring a bit more alone time than many of my more sociable peers.