Over the past four days, John and I built LEGO Technic 42023 together. John’s five and a half years old now. While I checked his work every few steps and took his direction on things he wasn’t physically strong enough to do — some of those new LEGO pieces are tight even for a grown man to push together easily — the vast majority of all three builds was accomplished by him, working alone.
It’s such an odd feeling. This person, who wasn’t even alive when I finished the 2008 NASA race season, who looks like me and sounds like me and can build complicated gear assemblies without my help. You know how that makes me feel? That’s correct, studio audience: superfluous. In the happiest way possible. Coming soon, the new and improved Jack Baruth. He’s not the absolute monster high-IQ prodigy I was, but I don’t recall that ever making me anything but miserable.
Case in point: LEGO Master Builder Set 853.
I think I got 853 around Christmas after my eighth birthday. This writeup captures the spirit of the kit, which at the time was the most complicated and difficult set LEGO had ever released. It was not, shall we say, over-documented and I spent a couple afternoons on my own just figuring out how the various parts worked.
I was already a devoted and experienced reader of Car and Driver by then and I was perfectly aware that this systeme Panhard chassis didn’t reflect the current thinking in automobiles. Still, to actually build a transmission, and to assemble the crankshaft… I was about as excited to do that as I was to drive that McLaren GT3 car last summer. I put it together, pushed it around, then promptly disassembled it to try building different transmissions, like a three-speed crashbox manual. I think I eventually figured one out, although it wasn’t constant-mesh and that annoyed me. I really wanted to build a constant-mesh LEGO transmission.
Although I spent about thirty-three years away from LEGOs, I have to say that I’ve really enjoyed watching John build them and serving as the occasional assistant to his genius. But what strikes me as different about our experiences is this: I built my LEGOs without help. Not because it wasn’t available — both of my parents would have helped me, had I asked, though neither of them are mechanically-gifted people — but because I wanted to be alone. Alone with the work, alone with the challenge, alone with the mystery and possibilities. I asked for no approval or praise when I finished it and I took it apart without comment. Alone in my room, without no television or conversation or music, I built the car then I took it apart. It’s how I preferred to do things.
My son, on the other hand, wants me to be involved. He wants people to look at the sets he assembles and the things he imagines. He says, “I like building the LEGOs best when we do it together.” He asks me to turn on the stereo then he sings along with Vampire Weekend or makes up words for Bela Fleck tunes on the fly. I would concentrate for hours on a single kit or a single idea; he looks up every ten minutes and suggests that we throw a ball back and forth or wrestle or punch each other. When the kits are together, he wants to play with them, not immediately disassemble them in search of something more difficult or individual. When I pick him up at school, I often find him helping one of the dumb-ass neurotypical other children fix their LEGO creations.
Keep in mind, he’s only a social person compared to me. I arrived at school one late fall evening, too late really, thanks to traffic and idiocy at work. The teacher told me he was out back. I walked through the school, through the glass doors, out to the playground. He was walking alone across the asphalt to the tallest playground structure. Children played together all around him but he paid no mind, walked through the chattering, laughing groups as if they did not exist, and climbed to the very top. He placed both of his hands on the steel rail and stood facing away from me. I climbed up silently behind him. “What are you doing, John?”
“Daddy,” he replied, “I’m watching the sunset.” Then I carried him out to the car on my shoulders. “Why did it seem like you were never going to get here?” he asked.
“I had things to do, and…” He interrupted.
“It’s okay, then.” Without a single mote of resentment, mind you. Daddy had things to do, so I watched the sun set. At his age, I was already boiling with resentment. The rank stupidity of my subhuman classmates at the day school whose minds were trapped in fetid molasses and who spoke like they had walnuts in their mouths. My teachers, who by the time I was eight were already clearly unable to understand me or come up with worthwhile things for me to learn but even in kindergarten seemed like dimwits. There weren’t enough books available and the car magazines only came out once a month and there was no Internet to provide me with an endless stream of pre-digested information.
Fuck me, was I bored and annoyed. And as a result I became a contentious and difficult person, which I acknowledge and have been doing my best to change. Always bored, always looking to upset the status quo, to challenge the strongest person or idea in the room, to win every argument and create an argument if there was none available. I’ve spent my entire life looking for something against which I could push. It’s a sickness as real as any other.
What a relief, then, to see none of it in my son, to see happiness and contentment and the desire to learn and enjoy things just for their own sake. This afternoon, after we completed the last of the three Technic models, I asked him to spend an hour alone with his other LEGOs so I could pack and ship some of these DTTS shirts. He went up to his room as I requested. About ten minutes later, I heard him calling for me. “John, are you alright?”
“Yes, Daddy, I need you to see something I made.”
He explained it to me: “I thought up that I could use the string to pull because the string bends so everything can turn. Now it can turn around very tight and not get stuck. It’s three things that all go together, Daddy, like what we made downstairs. You can go back and finish your work but I know you want me to be happy and to make nice things so I wanted to show you, so you didn’t worry about me while I was building.”
“Sweetheart,” I lied, “I’m not worried about you at all.”
I know from contentious and difficult; I didn’t arrive at it from exactly the same direction, but I know the territory well enough to sneer at Iowa Stubborn types on the train.
Thanx for this Jack ;
I was much like you and I’m ever so pleased my Son isn’t like me in the bad ways….
Legos sure have changed since 196- nevermind .
-Nate
Superlative.
My little girls just turned 2. Understands far more than I do. Here’s hoping we don’t screw them up, as seems so frighteningly possible.
Brings new meaning to the phrase “rise to the occasion,” doesn’t it?
I had an 853 kit when I was young, and I passed my love of Legos on to my son as well. He always loved the complicated ones, even now he enjoys the Mindstorms robotic kits. When he was young he also loved the Knex roller coaster kits. Give those a whirl, I bet your son will love the thrill of building a 5+ ft high working coaster. Enjoy this time… It’s fleeting.
I’ve been there with the insertion force. I don’t remember them to be that hard.
My son (who will be 6 in ~2 weeks) built his kits from last year almost by himself. Since everything for him is a *race*, the hard part was to keep him focused on the RTFM part. Then… he did what a normal kid would do: disassembly time. I am not sure I’d throw the 853 to him.
He’s showing interest in other stuff too. I picked a Lancia Delta Integrale kit in the local thrifty store (Japanese, paid $2 for $60 kit). Now he’s pushing to have the thing built.
“I became a contentious and difficult person, which I acknowledge and have been doing my best to change. ”
I always enjoy reading about your interactions with your son, because he is teaching you at least as much as you are teaching him, and teaching me as well. That a child his age has the desire and ability to appreciate watching the sun set is touching, and makes me realize how I too often take small, yet so very big, things like that for granted.
Someone said that the miracle was not that adults make children.
It’s that sometimes, children make adults.
I find myself in the rare position of being a father who thinks he has to live up to his adult son… .
Johnny P.
Wasn’t prepared to have my heart warmed like that today.
Not to peek down a dark path, but I was a violent, hellaciously anti-social little shit by that age, and it took significant, deliberate undoing. That you’ve been able to raise a person who sounds fundamentally kind and balanced, and who will likely continue to be so with the good start he’s been given, deserves all the praise I can give, for whatever it might be worth.
I meet so many people who seem to have a net-negative contribution to the world around them that just hearing a story of someone who’s probably going to be a cool adult is like a great gift. Thanks for that.
good story …
I was pretty Lego-obsessed as a kid. Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between you and John. Had a good chat during Christmas holiday with my engineer cousin on the subject of building toys … I’m glad to see there are still some good Lego Technics sets, as our impression was that most of the current Lego sets ‘rebuild’ potential had been ruined by all the branding tie-ins and prefab components. Both of us would second the Knex recommendation - makes some solid and satisfactory ‘wireframe’ vehicles as well as the architectural stuff.
The ‘need to push’ strikes a chord. We all get refined in various ways; I finally burned some of that edge off my psyche with surgical residency. On a vaguely related note, I should compliment you on making your accident, and John’s role in it, a significant refining experience for you.
I think that my personal need to push, and my resentment, was moderated by having three younger siblings with whom I generally did and still do have a good relationship. I wonder if you’d have had an even worse time of things without your brother …
Re: the prior discussion about SW PA and your upcoming article … there certainly are some fun roads in the area, but I have more to learn from you than you do from me on that topic since I’ve not spent as much time as I’d like in the area. I’ve lived in the Southeast most of my adult life, and the extended family in PA drives GM truck variants. Of course there are fun roads and a few stories. There’s a near-corkscrew on Kentuck Rd next to Deer Lake, and every few summers a sport biker comes around it at max lean into the oncoming lane and becomes a hood ornament. My most
scarymemorable road experience around Ohiopyle was on my Cannondale, taking a tight downhill corner at about 45 and nearly riding some pea gravel in the road under an oncoming rafting bus. I do think on one of the roads between Somerset and Ohiopyle, the one that goes past the wind turbines, would be a good drive, and the road between Kentuck Knob and Dunbar is twisty and gets limited traffic. Will look forward to your R&T article … but I confess I have limited enthusiasm about advertising the area for the ‘tail of the dragon’ guys.I think the most that an article in R&T would do would be to get people who were visiting the two FLW homes anyway to bring their 911 instead of their Cayenne 🙂
A parent who might have been a Mensa member, and a bit egotistical about herself, would have had to put aside her own needs and or wants to deal with a child as gifted as you seem to have been.
Every single day would have been a challenge. There would have been teachers threatened by your ability. She would have had to verbally kick ass and take names.
You might, being, so intelligent, be equally vulnerable. She might have been constantly watching for evidence that you were hurt by those who just could not understand the way you thought
Legos, Transformers, bikes, video games might have been provided to both show you how much you were loved and to watch you grow. Your rare smiles might have been more important than any academic awards in her past.
If you became lonely and aggressive, if you became hard to reach, as most of the terribly gifted do, she may have spent some teary nights.
But I would be willing to bet the farm that you were, and always will be, the literal pride and joy of her life.
I know. I have two with genius written on their records. Don’t be so hard on yourself. As John is your joy, so were you hers.
“Superlative.
My little girls just turned 2. Understands far more than I do. Here’s hoping we don’t screw them up, as seems so frighteningly possible.
Brings new meaning to the phrase “rise to the occasion,” doesn’t it?”
Just so ! .
I am lucky I seem to have dodged the bullet of screwing up my Son .
My Grand Daughter is 19 months and is beginning to read ! . wow .
Kids these days , they’re faster on the up take IMO .
-Nate
My experience with Lego’s is confined to nephews and the occasional female companions kids, as they came to market after I had discovered internal combustion powered vehicles( go cart at 8, mini bike at 9). I was however, hell with an Erector set.(yes I’m old and get off my lawn)
My son, my only son, whom I love, Moshe, when he was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up would say, “Lego technician”. One of his intro engineering classes used Lego Technic for their exercises. Everyone wanted to be in Mo’s work group and his work group always finished their assignments first.
Mo comes by his smarts honestly, his mom got something like 1480 on the SAT, and I have no problem at all saying that he’s smarter than I am. He got a perfect 800 on the math side and outscored me by at least 50 points on both math and verbal (but I contend that verbal’s been dumbed down a bit since 1971, when I took the test). So far he appears to be able to learn from his mistakes, something his father has not yet mastered.
I’m very proud of him. He’s married, with a toddler and a RPN wife with a weird work schedule, but he’s working full time and gone back to school to finish a math & physics degree, taking more than a full load of classes and getting a 4.0 across the board.
He also helped make me an amazing grandson.