I hate Legos. Despise them. I was reminded of them when an executive here in town brought them up after we sold a large baseball card collection for him and his retired father. He still collected them at age 40! Yes, I played with Legos briefly in the ’60s, so I can appreciate them. And Legos were the first thing I ever saw traded on the internet back in 1988. I get the fascination. I hate them for another reason.
The reason? Like many dads who raised kids who were Lego-crazy, I have a permanent condition dads around the world call “Legofoot.” Seriously. I have several very collectible bricks that reside permanently in each foot and one elbow — and the remnants of one in my arse. Well not “in” my arse, but embedded in an arse cheek. Visions of stepping on errant Legos and falling down after tripping on them are reasons I am glad our son is away at college.
Anyway, I find it interesting that the very first thing I ever saw sold on the internet was when I lived in Champaign-Urbana. My best friend had a Ph.D. in entomology and his wife was a professor. I used to visit them often to discuss collectibles and coins, things we had in common.
Selling Legos
One day, he motioned for me to come over to his computer (with its archaic black and white screen). He was actually communicating with other nerds in town on the computer! And what were they doing? Buying and selling stuff by typing code into their computers! What were these super-computer nerds trading — these “grown-up” 30-year-old men? Lego bricks, of course!
I watched in amazement as he sold a tiny “rare” Lego brick for $35 — for a piece of plastic (which actually was fine, because that was one less Lego with the potential to impale my epidermis or worse, my arse, in the future). Today, we buy and sell everything online, of course.
Our son is now working at a robotics firm while finishing his nerd degree (electrical engineering, I mean) and even though he is 22, when he comes home occasionally for a home-cooked dinner, he typically will go into his old room and play with his Legos. If only he were studying medicine … then he could figure out how to get the Lego remnants out of my arse cheek.
This is an archival article formerly written and is for informational purposes only. The valuations in this article have likely changed since it was first written.
