TIMOTHY HAM
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
From the first Roman catapults and English trebuchets, all the way to the Korean hwachas, mankind has always had an inexplicable affinity for rapid deconstruction.
I, like many others before me, was born with an innate penchant to see just how quickly I could knock something over with my raging toddler fists. Mr. Potatoes were mashed. Cabbage Patch Kids needed patch-ups. None escaped my infantile wrath, and all I knew was destruction.
That was, until I received my first box of Lego.
A bright, sky blue box wider than me, with a police station on the front lay before me as a present from my Aunt. Curious, I tore it open, and only after I had finished inspecting the transparent brick-filled packets did I notice the several glossy manuals that lay at the bottom of the box. Inside, there was a myriad of images of bricks snapping together.
Words were never my forte, but pictures! Pictures I could work with.
Over the next day, with the guidance of the sacred paintings, I was able to assemble the mighty police station, with its subterranean facilities and stoic watchtower. Then, I descended upon it with the unmatched fury only a hyperkinetic brat could produce.
Frankly, even now I don’t think I possess the sheer willpower and force to crack a Lego brick, but I was certainly capable of reducing the station into its more versatile,
rectangular components.
After the destruction, I aimlessly conjoined some plastic rubble; following that moment, I fell into a reverie, fusing piece to piece, brick to brick, in seemingly arbitrary steps, but when I finished, I was left with what appeared to be a crude shack.
I destroyed it. Then, I started again.
Every day, I cleared the topographical gray base plate, then created a new setting. A new story. A new world. Each time I erased the canvas, I would paint again, becoming just slightly more proficient with each building session.
This regular cycle of destruction and creation taught me to build, not just to destroy.
As the years passed, I received more and more Lego sets. I graduated from assembling sheds to fortresses, from cars that could barely roll to automations that can drive around obstacles. Heck, even now, I’ve got a Lego arbalest that can launch a marble across the room sitting on my piano.
I saw what pure creativity could do in those years, and ever since then, I’ve always wanted to be some kind of inventor, an engineer, someone who could create even more than they could destroy. I saw the purpose behind design, why the wheel has treads
instead of being bald, how columns support a bridge and distribute weight, why train wheels taper to fit the track.
I never abandoned my aptitude for destruction, but I gained a new desire to create. I realized that creation begets destruction, and vice versa. I saw that I couldn’t only destroy what I didn’t like in my life, and that I had to build something to take its place.
I always strive to resolve my issues by creating something to alleviate it, or destroying the root of the problem. All it took to instill this in me was a sky blue box with the ingredients for anything you could imagine.
After all, even the mighty trebuchet, which could rain havoc like no other, needed someone to create it.