Memories of 853, The Creative Impulse

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."