When I was 10 years old, I remember playing with my few LEGO® sets until exhaustion. Every Christmas, I eagerly waited for the catalogues from the big retail stores, showcasing all the toys you can imagine. My favorite toys were always RC cars and of course… LEGO®!
One day, I went with my mom to her manager’s house and… I saw IT! An enormous LEGO® Technic set, that I only had seen in the Christmas catalogues booklets… and that I thought I would never see in real life. ‘IT’ was the 8865 Test Car, laying around… Half on the floor… Half on the box… left abandoned, and worse… I wasn’t authorized to play with IT!
That day, I secretly promised myself – ‘One Day I will have IT! Meanwhile (unfortunately…) I grew up, and went into my LEGO® dark ages, years went by and LEGO® became just a fading memory. just a memory and fade!
Years later, when I was already an adult, my inner geek started to come out again when I started watching The Big Bang Theory. When my girlfriend gave The Big Bang Theory LEGO® ideas set, I rediscovered the world of LEGO® again!
This year I turned 40. And one night, after putting my 2-year old daughter to sleep, I went on Ebay to look for my next LEGO® set. And I stumbled upon it… a second-hand 8865 Test car! With so many memories coming back to me I decided – I have to have IT!
Photo credit: Alexandre Fernandes
And as I write this story, I am bringing its yellow aged bricks back to vibrant colors – and I can’t wait to build IT… Finally.
Em 2017, para os meus 40 anos, a minha esposa quis oferecer-me algo épico. E algo épico para mim, só podia ser LEGO®.
E em 2017 era um ano importante – os meus 40 anos de idade e os 40 anos do começo da saga do Star Wars! Entao, nada melhor do que comemorar as duas datas com o melhor presente de sempre – a LEGO® UCS Millenium Falcon.
No entanto, o set estava esgotado e não chegaria a tempo do meu aniversário. Quando a minha mulher escreveu à LEGO® a pedir se eles poderiam entregar a tempo, em resposta recebi esta carta.
Até hoje, dos melhores serviço ao cliente que conheço. E a LEGO® Millenium Falcon foi o meu melhor presente de sempre!
Eu e o meu pai sempre fomos os melhores amigos e os melhores companheiros de brincadeiras.
Das memórias mais felizes que tenho foi num Natal em que os meus pais fizeram um esforço enorme para me dar uma coleção de LEGO® que eu adorava – uma casa de família repleta de flores. Ainda hoje recordo com carinho a paciência que o meu pai tinha para me ajudar a montar as flores, naquela estrutura verde tão pequenina que as minhas mãos pequenas e desengonçadas não conseguiam segurar.
Photo Credit: CMateus
Tenho os meus LEGO® guardados para que um dia possa ajudar uma criança minha a montar cada um deles de novo.
When I was a child, I would borrow all my LEGO® from my cousins.
They were given to me in big shopping bags filled with bricks, or half-built with one or two parts to be rebuilt. I loved building and played with these bricks all the time building houses for my dolls or just doing official repairs for my cousins!
When I saw LEGO® adson TV, I wondered the amount of imagination it took to build such boats and buildings – and I tried my best to replicate them with my bricks.
The years went by, and as an adult was time to do the same that my cousins did for me – spark imagination and creativity. So when my son turned 5, I bought him a LEGO® box and I was completely gobsmacked that there were instructions. I had no idea!
The hero: me, of course. I was positively groping all the minifigure bags in the shop, although the sign was quite clear – DO NOT to touch anything. But I was determined to find Minnie and Mickey.
Photo Credit: Antonio Marques Mendes
The villain: The security guard. He saw me and tried to kick me out but the store manager looked at me and laughed at my technique… and lack of shame.
The ending: I was completely embarrassed, but I found them, purchased them and brought Minnie and Mickey home…where they belonged.
At 8 I had a big box of LEGO® bricks. I mean a big, BIG box.
It was so big that I could easily fit inside the box. I had all kinds of pieces, bricks and LEGO® stuff in there. I even had a smaller red box to sort LEGO® bricks, by color and by shape.
I think it was a box of some sort of appliance my parents bought. I used it to keep my LEGO® safe from the world (meaning my dog and other kids).
Vintage LEGO® Photo credit: Diogo Lobo
And it was always the same ritual: I would bend the box slightly so all the pieces could lie on the floor but so that ALL the pieces could be in sight. DO NOT lose any piece was the absolute mantra. Even if I didn’t need it for a build, I would never lose one single brick. Never.
Then, creativity took over and castles, cars, buildings and even ice creams would see the light of the day. In the end, I would put all the pieces back in the big box and close it with that childish feeling that my treasure was safe. Those were the days!!
Many amazing structures were built and destroyed minutes afterwards, but one always stuck with me. The Yellow Tower!
One day, I decided to build the biggest tower one could ever see, meaning a tower that could reach the ceiling of my room — aka the sky.
But not just any tower, it would be a single line with one brick on top of the other straight to the sky. Will it stand? Do I have enough pieces? How many days will I need?
Construction began just after school, making sure no one would enter my room. With the coast clear, the next task was critical: choose the brick. Don´t know why I had so many yellow pieces (maybe it’s one of the most common colors) but this was the one that I had most pieces of. So be it.
One Brick to Rule Them All
Effortlessly with the wind blowing in my hair and looking at my bedroom’s ceiling (AKA the sky), I started to put bricks one on top of the other.
First try: 30 seconds later it fell, didn’t even reach the height of my forehead.
Second try: looking good and steady until someone opened the door and I looked away slightly touching it. Nooooooooo….
Third try: My hands are shaking.
Maybe I need help.
– “Moooooom!”
– “Why don’t you do it in sections and then put them together?”
– “What are sections? “ — I was 8…
– “You do one part with 20 bricks and put it on the floor. Then do another one exactly the same, and another, and another. Once you have 6 or 7 sections, let me know and I´ll help you.”
And then again I went. Section by section I was learning that a journey is made of small steps. One after the other just like LEGO® bricks, one after the other.
Once I had my sections ready to shine, we started to build it. And we only finished it when it touched the ceiling (almost). And there it was — a single line of yellow bricks from the ground to the ceiling, from down below to the clouds above.
I was 8…
I must have of photo of it somewhere. I still have the box. I still open it sometimes and remember that big tower.
