The Story in my Son’s Mind
Musings on a Lego Scene
Right now, I’m sitting at the dining room table, also known as our complete junk everything on it table. It’s where I do a lot of my painting, and we have all of Ben’s old school stuff, plus we do at least try to eat here. Right now, though, I’m looking at Benjamin’s big Lego set thing he has here. It’s a big blue square, maybe a foot and a half on a side with a pull-out drawer. The whole top is a yellow base plate where you can build. He has a scene made up of Lego guys and some various blocks. Some of the guys have shapes for heads, rather than the traditional heads. I guess these are meant to be robots or something? One has a yellow cube with a big eyeball attached to the front. There are a couple Lego Ninjago ninja characters, which he recently got at the book fair at his school.
There’s a guy holding a little dumbbell, and Ben even has that guy lying down as if he were doing exercises. He has a set-up with antennas, and a rectangle which says Police on it. It’s like some sort of communications outpost. There is a plant growing in one corner, short “walls” breaking up the whole scene. A few guys have their hands up like they are waving to someone. There are a couple pairs of people who seem to be having a conversation. One robot-like guy is mid-stride, with one foot pointed back, and his whole body leaning forward. There are several loose heads lying around for some reason and the base of a small vehicle, upside-down.
I describe all of this because it’s here, first of all, but also because it’s one of those moments where I realize how amazing this kid is. We definitely give him a hard time with so much of his behavior, especially with how he relates to his sister. But we sometimes forget how amazingly smart he is. I’m sure that in his mind, he has a whole story put together for all that is happening in this scene. He probably has a reason why the guy with an orange chainsaw-like thing for a head has both arms waving up in the air. He probably has a reason why the guy with a penguin body but a gray cube as a head is standing facing the guy with the robot-designed body and a penguin mask on his head. What could those two be talking about, that my son imagines in his mind?
Today, I started a little bit of an activity with my third-grade students which involves…wait for it…imagination. And honestly, half of the kids didn’t seem to even want to try it. We were talking about characters…who our favorite ones were. Some gave some good answers, like Ariel from “The Little Mermaid” or some children from a couple series of books. Others, though, gave a person they can choose in a video game because they were the best fighter or runner. I wanted to discuss character so we could move into making our own characters, who could then be the center of an eventual creative story the kids make up. I wanted to spark some of them into maybe making their own version of a “novel.” I definitely got some excited, so we’re going to do it. But I was discouraged a bit at the few who seemed to absolutely dread having imagination come into their lives. Pretty soon, students aren’t going to want to even pick up some crayons to color. Or play any kind of game requiring creativity at all. I am afraid for that day.
But for now, I can rest assured that my oldest son, my Benjamin, is not at that point yet. I can be okay with the absolute mess he makes with his Lego stuff (the plural of Lego is “Lego” but I still feel weird saying it…thus, me adding “stuff”), as long as he is having his sense of imagination being nurtured. I wish I took better care of that when I was young. I think back to those detective stories I wrote at my stepfather’s workplace, or the hand-written tale of a superhero I made up. And I wonder how much further I could have gone if I hadn’t pretty much waited until my thirties to give myself permission to imagine once more.
I guess all can do for now is make sure my son, and my other two children behind him, never completely lose that. And if I can pull along a few of my students on the way, that’d be nice, too.
