The Art of the Brick

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leGo wars

doG

When I was a kid, my parents let me keep a 36-square-

foot LEGO city in our living room. Maybe Mom and

Dad thought it made for a good conversation piece,

or perhaps they were just patient. It was behind the

couch, so visitors didn’t necessarily see it at first

glance. But if you did peek behind the cushions, you’d

have seen office buildings, roads, homes, airports,

hospitals, military bases, cars, trucks, stuntmen, kids

playing on the street, and other scenes of a vibrant

miniature community. Sometimes my sister, Stephanie,

who’s three years younger than I am, would play with

me in my city.

We lived outside the city limits of Veneta, and our

nearest neighbor was over a mile away, so it wasn’t

like I could go knock on a friend’s door very easily.

Growing up, if I wanted to play with another kid, it

hadto be my sister.

Dogs do speak, but only to those

who know how to listen.

—Orhan Pamuk

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Stephanie would give my LEGO figures names and

backstories. I would be playing with this guy on a

motorcycle and I’d say, “Hey, watch this jump,” and

she’d go, “Yeah, that’s Dan. He’s married to Susan,

they’ve been living together for years, and they have

this white house with the yellow roof.” And I’d say,

“Yeah, sure!” For me, Dan was just a crazy guy on a

motorcycle; for Stephanie, he was a family man with

so much to lose if the jump went wrong.

Now, the thing about this LEGO city behind the couch

is that it wasn’t just a city. It was also a highly organized

military complex, from which I could arrange sorties

and other campaigns against Stephanie’s Barbie

dollhouse, which she kept in her room.

I would create an army of LEGO figures and build

aircraft and warships out of LEGO bricks to attack

the Barbies. I couldn’t just carry my army down

the hallway to her bedroom; it had to have official

transport. For whatever reason, I decided that the

hall carpet was an ocean, so the army couldn’t drive.

Planes and battleships were the order of the day.

The army would sail forth over the carpet-ocean, then

knock politely on the door. Stephanie would open the

door, and I’d yell, “Attack!”

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