LEGO Orgies

On gray weekdays I used to sit by the window watching a pigeon that had claimed the tree outside, and I’d think about when I was actually happy. Not the big moments—not winning a Nintendo, not the day I got accepted to move to Berlin, not the first time anything sexual happened. No. The real happiness was somewhere else entirely.

In my first apartment we had a spare room where my toys lived. Stupid movie posters on the wall, but what mattered was the wooden box by the door. I’d gotten it for a birthday years back. That box was my entire life. My whole life compressed into one thing.

And by my whole life, I mean LEGO. Just LEGO. When I had time—which was most of the time—I’d spend entire days in that room with soundtracks playing, sometimes a radio show, occasionally getting dragged outside by friends to play whatever it was we played. But then back to my LEGO planet.

I had so much of it. Every Christmas, every birthday, one thing mattered: another box of new pieces. This was before the branded stuff, before Harry Potter and Star Wars colonized everything. Back then it was just City or Aliens or submarines—these ridiculous massive yellow submarines—or pirates. Just plastic.

I never followed the instructions like a normal kid. I built civilizations. Entire worlds with cities and massive spaceships, a gold volcano in the middle somewhere, secret headquarters scattered all over. Restaurants and bedrooms and prisons and laboratories and rooms that shouldn’t exist. The figures weren’t random—they had names, jobs, relationships, families, politics, wars. I created complete societies with economies and enemies and social structures. Even the Mighty Max and Polly Pocket stuff somehow ended up part of this dense urban fantasy I kept expanding.

Then I got interested in actual breasts instead of plastic bricks, and my parents sold the whole collection on eBay for almost nothing. I had Nintendo, I had the internet, I had a girlfriend. That was supposed to be enough. LEGO was kid stuff.

But now I’m surrounded by people who can’t let go of their childhood—they’ll take any excuse to bring back pixels and vinyl and Pokemon, hanging onto anything that reminds them they used to be young. And I feel the absence of what I sold. Those long nights building something that only existed because I decided it should. I miss that more than I wanted to admit.

What would be perfect is a place for people like me. A loft somewhere, LEGO scattered everywhere, just show up and spend a few hours building something stupid and elaborate together. It would be creative. It would be healthy. But that’s a fantasy. Instead I’m here thinking about a wooden box I don’t have anymore, wishing I’d never let it go.