Some people don’t have an issue with the subject of play. I guess they didn’t grow up in a household where anything “not work” was the same as doing “nothing” which would earn one the label of being “lazy.” There were pleasures to life, but only to be partaken after all of the work was completed. The unspoken part was that the work is never really “completed.” You work and then you rest so that you can work some more. That was the M.O. in the Bustillos household growing up. Why I’m going on and on about all of this is because I just spent the whole weekend, from Saturday afternoon until 1 am Monday morning, building this LEGO (knock-off) beauty: NASA’s SLS (Space Launch Systems) Rocket:

This SLS Rocket is the fourth LEGO kit of over 800 pieces that I have built in the last four weeks. I noticed that my finger tips were a little sore this morning because I had to work with a lot of very small, very snug parts that I needed to assemble and disassemble several times because of errors I made along the way. Not too surprising that my finger tips would be sore. I worked on the build from 2:30 Saturday afternoon until about 5:30, took a dinner break (at In-n-Out, of course), then continued working on the build once I got home from about 7pm until 2:30 am, and then I was back at it from Sunday 11am until just about 1am Monday morning. This model represents about 23 hours of work. 

Here are the other three models/kits that I’ve worked on this past month:

The next question I’ve heard when I share my apparent obsession with LEGO is “why,” as in, why do I do this? I mean, obviously it takes many hours to complete these builds and LEGO, especially official LEGO kits, can be quite expensive. Of all my many interests, why LEGO?

I’m pretty sure LEGO wasn’t a thing when I was a kid (G.I. Joe and Lincoln Logs yes, but no LEGO). You have to fast-forward all the way to 2015-2016, when I was teaching at Full Sail Labs and we used LEGO for some robotics (in connection with Dash & Dot robots) and some stop-motion film classes that we taught. But it really wasn’t something that I spent any time with until I moved to Las Vegas in 2017 to create Fitzgerald Elementary’s STEAM Lab where I encountered a lot boxes filled with LEGO pieces from previous years’ First LEGO League kits and who-knows-what. I quickly discovered that giving students free LEGO build time was an excellent activity for their social skills, small motor skills, problem solving, creativity and imagination. Some time later, I discovered that after-class student-creation disassembly sessions were a great non-mental exercise that I could do to relax at the end of the day.

The thing that really captured my attention, though, was when I started working with the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 kits and needed to gain some expertise if I was going to teach robotics. There was something meditative about having a box full of parts and an instruction booklet and within an hour one could have a programmable robot. 

Up until then all of my technology/computer related activities and expertise had been with blogs and websites and virtual spaces. This was different. There were aspects where I was just following directions, nothing deep, nothing high risk. And just like with the kids, it was good for me to use my small motor skills to pop together and pull apart these tiny plastic pieces. It wreaked havoc on my finger nails for a bit and threatened my guitar/finger picking (due to having such busted, raggedy finger nails). I definitely needed to step up my skin moisturizer regiment.

There were a couple turning points for me. The first was when I encountered instructions on how to build a Wall*E type robot with the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 kits. I couldn’t get enough and ended up buying my own personal LEGO Mindstorms EV3. I definitely have some obsession with the Wall*E model and the design of the last two Mars Rovers. The second turning point was when I realized that I was beginning to improvise my robot builds. That is, whenever we were missing parts or something wasn’t working as expected, I was beginning to be able to go from just following directions to looking at design and learning how to work around parts or design problems. It was fun.

By the time I was deep into my Mars Rover obsession, LEGO had discontinued selling the model and the few remaining kits being sold on Amazon were well over $300. So, studying the images of the discontinued LEGO model, I reverse-engineered the drive assembly construction, using spare parts that I had access to at the STEAM Lab. 

I understand that this exploration/obsession might be boring to someone else. I’ve figured out that it can be like what gardening is for some people. It’s a creative act of manual labor that sometimes just flows and sometimes requires some problem solving and it’s just fun making things and going from part to a desired object. Basically, I’m playing. 

One of the first courses I took during my teacher education was called Middle Childhood and one of the first things I learned about was the definition of “play.” Play, it turns out, can be understood as being any activity enjoyed by the participants where the objective of the activity does not require or something have any end goal, but the focus is on the enjoyment of the activity. The enjoyment might be understood as simply being able to do something that might have been difficult before and may carry a sense of accomplishment. My first thought when I heard that definition was that my father, when we were spending our Saturdays and Sundays toiling in the backyard doing yard work, for him that was play. He told mom that we would be done… some time in the future, but that was never the real objective. The real objective was that he enjoyed working on the plants and lawn and whatever we were supposed to be doing. He was playing. I never experienced those weekends that way, but that was what it was to him. It made him feel good. He was playing the whole time. And I believe that as his health declined in his last years, that it really hurt him to not be able to spend hours pruning the trees and pulling the weeds. And sadly, he never really seemed to find a suitable substitute for working in the yard. 

That’s sad, because, just like my former students with the buckets of LEGO, we never cease to need to continue to develop our social skills, maintain our small motor skills, our problem solving skills, creativity and imagination. It’s important in all stages of our lives to maintain some active expression of what is inside of us. It’s not enough for us to passively watch the world go by or some video screen. I hope that you still have some fun activity that you can’t get enough of. 

P.S.: This video just popped up in my feed and reminds me of one reason why I’m also happy to be retired…