PAgent’s Progress

Last month the Boy found out there was going to be a LEGO Master Builder (the only one in North America) at Washington Square mall during the two days after Halloween, building an 8-foot R2-D2 out of LEGOs. He’s been counting the days ever since, reminding me nearly every day, and generally sitting on the edge of his seat waiting for the big weekend to arrive.

My chances of weaseling out of taking him to see it were effectively nil. Unless I wanted to be an ogre.

I expected to see a solitary craftsman, placing individual bricks with the care of an artisan, surrounded by throngs of admirers, perhaps held back by a velvet rope. Boy, was I wrong.

Instead there was a massive, carefully organized operation, where tables were set up for kids to assemble LEGO subunits, which were carried over to the builder, who then placed them into the incomplete figure. The subunits were basically scaled-up LEGO bricks, and my son (the engineer) immediately grasped that you could easily scale up a set of LEGO plans by just making what were effectively giant LEGO bricks.

Also, being the dutiful citizen (SJ in Meyers-Briggs speak) he immediately set to work as a cog in this particular machine, and started making bricks. Gray ones. Ten of them, all together.

It was pretty cool.

The Boy had a really good time, earned a Certificate of Participation, and bought himself a new STAR WARS LEGO set to boot.

You can see all the pics I took of the event in this flickr photoset.