Excerpt from "Life Lessons My Father Taught Me" : The Lego Always Attack At Night (1718 hits)
Category: HumorRating: 1.68 on 21 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by The Internet Slacker (View user info) at 2006-02-23 23:37:12 EST
Like most kids I was very competent at scattering my toys around the house. My Father, however, considered this skill as a bad character trait called "laziness", mostly due to the fact he constantly stepped on my toys by accident.
I lost many a good toy to Dad's crushing tread...but not all. No, there was one toy that could not be broken; in fact it would actually defend itself very competently against all attackers.
I am of course talking about Lego. Those tiny educational plastic building blocks kids of all generations have been enjoying for years, including myself. Due to the fact that Lego is near-indestructible, pretty well all the pieces can take 327 pounds of paternal downward mass and escape unharmed...and leave a very painful imprint on the bottom of Dad's foot afterwards.
Anyone here who has actually stepped on a piece of Lego knows what I'm talking about, and that's pain. The small sharp corners, the little round interconnecting bits that stick up and leave tiny reverse "Lego" scrolling font on your soles...yes, indeed, I'm surprised the military or police haven't explored the possibilities of using Lego as some sort of caltrop.
Due to the agony-inducing qualities of these innocuous looking blocks, Father used to particularly freak out when removing one wedged between or in his toes. "Sweet Mother of God!" he'd yell to the heavens in an obvious sign of his spirituality, "Boy, why do you have to leave your friggin' toys all over the place?"
I could never answer that question, even when I asked it of myself. Yet Dad would always ask why I littered my possessions as if it were an obsession of mine. It wasn't, mind you; I didn't have to scatter my toys all over the household, including the toilet bowl, cat's litter box, and Mom's make-up case...I just did it, because I was a kid. I guess that's where the confusion lay between my father and me.
There was only one time where I intentionally put some toys in my Dad's path. And when I say, "some toys", I mean "lots and lots of excruciatingly painful Lego blocks".
Dad had angered me and, of course, I couldn't exactly openly confront him with it. No, no...if I was going to follow any of the examples he had taught me, it was much better to wait until my target was vulnerable before striking. This lesson, by the way, was taught to me when I observed my father waiting for Uncle Doug to get drunk and start vomiting (like usual) at a party. Taking the opportunity of his brother's inebriation, my Dad took pictures he subsequently made into Christmas cards. Family Christmas cards, mind you. And that was the only year he seemed to care enough about our distant cousins in New Zealand to mail them one. I can only imagine their reactions when they opened up our family's Christmas-y envelope and traumatically confronted by a picture of Uncle Doug throwing up Miller Lite on a snowbank.
So I planned. I knew my Dad was weakest at night when he usually got up around three in the morning to use the washroom. His bladder was clockwork that way, unless he had fallen asleep in front of the television. On those occasions I still remember waking up to the test pattern tone and walking to the living room to see Father splayed out on the recliner. I hated to wake him, he looked so peaceful in the multicolored cathode ray glow, the "BWEEEEEE" sound emanating from the TV....those were the only times he seemed truly happy. But I knew if he slept all night in that chair he'd wake up with a sore back and be cranky all day and probably not give me money for the ice cream man, so it really was enlightened self-interest propelling me to wake him in those situations.
But mostly he slept in bed, of course. And I'd always hear my parent's door opening late at night as he walked down the hallway. Seventeen heavy footsteps later, I'd hear the bathroom door opening. Then the 'tink!' sound of the toilet lid being lifted up. After a brief silence, the steady liquid droning of parental bladder drainage would assault my young ears. The sound would taper off to silence, followed by flushing, then the "tink!" of the lid going back down, and Father would re-trace his seventeen steps back to the bedroom. I'd hear the door close, and then the faint sounds of the protesting bed springs and my Mom asking him in a sleepy voice if he put the toilet lid back down as he resumed his sleep.
So I knew he pretty well operated on autopilot during those nightly visits to the john. Now that I had a time and a place to strike, I just had to come up with a plan to get him. But all I had were some toys and an overly-imaginative brain. I couldn't exactly throw a Nerf ball at my Dad and expect any sort of emotional satisfaction. What to do...what to do?
And then I spied my big blue box of Lego pieces innocently sitting in the corner of my room. It was a huge two and a half foot tall container, and there had to be thousands of tiny little blocks and other shapes in it...all made out of indestructible, father-foot-ravaging plastic possibilities...
I began to plan...
**** **** ****
It's two-twenty three in the morning. The world is dark and silent. I know I have a little less than an hour to put 'Operation Bringdown' into effect before Dad makes his predictable three a.m. visit to the restroom.
I'm lying in bed staring up at the ceiling, going over and over the plan in my juvenile mind. When everything and everyone seems to be perfectly quiet and presumably asleep, I silently hop out from under the covers and pad, ninja-like, over to my large box of Lego.
I had previously prepared the box for transportation by sticking the little blocks of Lego to the larger pieces so that there would be no alarm-raising plastic rattling as I carry it with two hands out of my room. I have to be quiet pushing the door open with my shoulder, but I move with a quiet determination and patience born from years of practice of infuriating my Father.
Wow, it's dark. I can barely see a thing as I creep down the hallway, keeping the box low to the floor. I'm positive my Dad won't be able to see a thing when he takes what will probably be his last seventeen steps for quite awhile.
About three -quarters of the way to the washroom, I put the Lego box down and start to get to work. Now, it'd be easy enough to just scatter the pieces willy-nilly about the hallway wood-flooring, but that just wouldn't be very creative. I figure, if I'm going to get in trouble, I might as well have some fun.
I ponder for a few minutes trying to determine the best things to build out of Lego for my Dad to step on for maximum effect. I want to put some aesthetic appeal in my creations for the "landmine area", so I'm glad that I remembered to bring each and every single Lego piece I owned for just this moment.
I spin a few pieces in my hands to get a few ideas churning and then I go to work. Keeping the exposed tender soles of my Dad in mind, I build the following objects and lay them down randomly a few steps away from the bathroom door:
--> A lot of Lego kits include thin green plastic sheets that blocks are stuck onto to make toy house foundations, gardens, lawns, etc. I take one of the larger green squares, about a foot and a half on each side, and stick on all the little plastic Lego trees I own. Put together in such a tight group, they look very much like smooth art-deco Christmas trees and are very nicely pointy on top. I'm able to stick about three and a half dozen standing up on the sheet. I place the plastic contraption right in front of the bathroom door like a demented prepubescent Punji Pit trap.
--> I place all the tiny Lego car wheels standing upright, along with the rolling vehicle bases. I think to myself that my Dad will appreciate a trap that doesn't puncture his foot but instead propels him forward at an alarming rate as they spin out underneath him.
--> I scatter an alarmingly large amount of the tiny one-button pieces, especially the square ones that have a knack for getting almost terminally wedged in between the toes. There was no way my Dad was going to miss stepping on any one, or thirty-seven, of them.
I pray to God the housecat doesn't mistake one for a kibble.
---> The long, thin pieces I build up into Byzantine sculptures reaching into the sky. I muse to myself it'll be like a drunken Godzilla stumbling around a field of Eiffel towers when my Dad steps on and destroys my impromptu creations worthy of any art gallery.
---> The larger square blocks I use to build simple little houses and position them as if they were a small village. Father always said he wanted see more exciting cities than the one we lived in.
---> I save the best for last. I gather up all my dear little Lego people, the ones with the round yellow heads and small semi-poseable plastic torsos and legs, and place them around "Takedown Village" in various situations. The ones bearing weapons such as pitchforks and swords valiantly hold their deadly implements into the sky, awaiting battle against my Father's fearful footfall. Unarmed citizens cower by small plastic doorways holding each other, mothers tenderly embracing their suckling babies close to their chests protectively. Sheep and dogs are left out to fend for themselves, and they sense something wrong in the air, for they lie on their backs in order to expose their dagger-like feet. The horses are lined up right outside the village, their reins tied to posts, left out as a sacrifice by the villagers in the hopes of appeasing the killer giant about to destroy the land of their ancestors.
I stand back with great pride as I place the last little man, a pirate who made the mistake of taking shore leave during this crucial moment in the village's history. I figure there's about half-an-hour, twenty minutes, before my Dad gets out of bed to relieve himself. Well Pops, I figure, you're not going to get much relief tonight, unless it's all over the hallway floor after making the mistake of not looking where you step.
I tiptoe carefully through the plastic field of certain trouble and get back into bed. I take the precaution of closing my bedroom door, but I don't figure that's going to be much help. I don't see a couple of inches of pressboard wood stopping the wrath of my father after he presumably survives what I've planned for him. He'll probably tear through that door like the family Doberman performing surgery on a jellyfish.
Aw, well. He should have given me money to buy ice cream this afternoon. Never deny a hungry fat child who is way too smart for his own (or anybody's) good.
**** **** ****
My Mom still talks about 'The Noise' to this day.
I had actually fallen asleep. I still can't believe *that* to this day. You'd figure any kid preparing such a devious trick for his beloved Father would stay awake to get some enjoyment from the experience before being terminally grounded. But no, not me. I tried to stay awake, mind you, but my childish circadian rhythm was not to be denied: after waiting half-an-hour for Dad to wake up and meet his dark Lego destiny, I slipped into a deep, deep sleep.
It wasn't totally my fault, really. Occasionally, due to the whims of random chance, my Dad would get up a little later than usual to use the facilities, maybe between four and five a.m. This occurrence was rare, but I should have taken it into account. In any case, the extended waiting time put a blunt edge on my enthusiasm, and it was off to dreamland for me.
For my Dad, though, his nightmare was just about to begin. I'm not sure if I can exactly relate how the scene (and he) went down...but I can recreate some of the events from the reports my Mother gave me afterwards and the red words of rage and profanity my Dad blasted in my face after accusingly pointing at various square-shaped scars on his chest, neck, and face. Since I was commanded to immediately clean up the Lego blast area afterwards, with careful examination of the scattering patterns of the blocks and some circular dents on the wall next to the bathroom door that suspiciously resembled the circumference of my father's forehead, I formulated a pretty good mental playback of my Dad's, uh, 'trip' to the washroom.
So, to the best of my knowledge, I think I can faithfully re-create the events as they occurred that dark, loud night...
**** **** ****
The obese forty-three year old man wakes up. As usual, there's a nightly pressure in his bladder calmly announcing its scheduled break-time. Resigned to the fact that he can't get his wife or his son to perform the act of urination for him since his bladder is in fact inside his own body, the hairy half-naked paternal figure gets slowly out of bed and stands up.
Blearily scratching his thick neck, the father of a son about to get into a universe of trouble opens the bedroom door and slouches into the dark hallway. He never bothers to turn on the hallway light since he only needs to walk in a straight forward direction to the bathroom. Little suspecting the direction he'd be taking that particular night would be downward with a painful velocity while playing host to tiny Swedish plastic blocks stuck to his body like parasitic barnacles, he begins his quest.
The night is deceptively peaceful, aside from the soft sounds of the housecat trying to cough something small out of its throat. Nothing to alert the half-asleep man that in a few moments, life is going to get very confused and very loud.
Eleven steps down the hallway and everything is going well. His bladder is looking forward to some much anticipated relief, and both organ and man are looking forward to getting the job done and going back to bed. The dim silhouette of the bathroom doorway just begins to come into view, almost invisible against the dark hallway walls.
The fourteenth step is where the first sign of trouble registers in the man's half-aware brain. His left foot arcs out in a powerful step that scatters most of the sacrificial horses, tearing them cruelly out of their little plastic bridals as they scatter neighing to the four winds.
Unbalanced, the left foot continues its path of accidental destruction by landing squarely on a tiny pointy-roofed house. The father's son had imagined to life a small family named the Tuckersons living happily within, about to celebrate the joyous occasion of their son's graduation from clown college. Unfortunately, their lives are cut short as their happy domesticity is instantly crushed by a huge naked foot similar to the opening credits of a Monty Python show.
But the Tuckerson's get their posthumous revenge: the tiles of the roof break off and jab into the vulnerable flesh of the foot's sole, bringing forth a bellow of surprise and indignation from the giant. His balance tragically thrown off-kilter, the Tuckerson-killer brings his right foot forward in a desperate attempt to remain standing...right into the nearby forest of horrified coniferous trees.
This foot couldn't have landed more perfectly in the middle of the small sharp plastic points if it had been laser-guided. The sound this brings from the foot-bearer is so startlingly loud the spooked housecat expels a one-piece white circular piece of Lego it had mistaken for a Purina Chow food product and flees in the opposite direction in the first recorded instance of a mammal achieving the speed of light.
The trees of the forest are instantly felled, as is nearly the now-stricken bulk of a man who had just wanted to pee. His left hand lashes out to steady his balance on a nearby wall, but he has to move his right foot off the ground and away from the current source of agony. As he begins to do so, his left foot takes an inadvertent supportive half-step back and the heel catches yet another small house. Good-bye, little Lego widow Haggarty. At least you'll be seeing your husband in Toy Heaven, now.
This heel, sensing imminent danger, sends the signal "oh no you don't" to the brain and moves the rest of the foot away at an extreme velocity from the remains of the second house and directly onto two sheep and a dog. Or, more accurately, the combined pointy sensations of twelve tiny plastic feet, since they were strategically placed upside-down by the man's demonic offspring.
This failed step buckles the man. The pain, so sudden, explodes through his now fully awake, traumatized nervous system. He can't hold onto the wall as he begins to fall sideways, both of his feet in agony. Panicking for balance, he twists his torso and brings his right foot, scattering tiny toy trees along its path, in a cross-wise fashion to his left while bending his knees. This unconscious maneuver would have worked well in a normal situation to keep him standing; indeed, the half-year of karate lessons he took in his youth left him with a pretty good sense of balance.
However, no martial artist, practicing or not, should be expected to move gracefully in a field of tall plastic girders connected to each other in an extremely fragile manner. As the right foot strikes them they literally explode, detaching from each other in wide chaotic arcs to scatter throughout the entire household. Compared to the first bellowing, this noise is still pretty darn impressive as it awakens the man's wife who draws the conclusion that somehow a bear got into the house and was defiling her collection of tiny crystalline unicorn figurines.
Terminally off-balance by this turn of uncontrollable events, the father continues his attempts to stop falling but it's not going well. His right foot, shocked at the impact against these improvised Eiffel tower replicas and the remaining trees jammed into it, jerks upward from the ground refusing to complete its landing due to a sudden case of not wanting to get impaled. This doesn't leave the left foot in a convenient position, gravity-wise.
This particular left foot mercifully leaves the tender mercies of a plastic horse's hooves but slips out from underneath the man. In one last achingly desperate and heroic attempt to remain vertical and presumably in one piece his right foot, observing all this action from the air, decides to risk everything and seek the uncertain refuge of the floor. The father takes the step, for that's all he can do at this point.
I suspect, after this entire experience, this man came to hate the inventor of the wheel. For that's what his last chance at balance comes down on; more specifically, a rather large green piece of plastic with four wheels on it which supposedly normal kids would build Lego cars, not weapons of paternal destruction.
There is literally no chance of balance. The right foot, laden with the bulk of an incredibly heavy and panicked man, drives the Lego wheeled toy underneath for approximately three-and-a-half feet at an extreme forward velocity. Not as close as the housecat's arc of escape was, but enough to hurl his entire body up into the air to hang almost horizontally for a microsecond in a beautiful example of Newton's Third Law.
The Lego villagers look up with doom in their eyes. The almost invisible shadow of the falling man's massive body grows and grows under the feeble red light of the hallway smoke detector. They know they have but a second to live so they live it fully, embracing each other and saying, "I Always Loved You" before the Armageddon about to fall separates their round heads from their torsos and legs.
This father does not merely fall. He Is Brought Down. With a foundation-shaking blast of floor protestation the man crash-slams back down to earth. The villagers are snuffed out, their houses along with them. A couple of hundred tiny square and round one-button pieces instantly find their way into every crevice of his body; this man will actually discover an example of this type of Lego under his left love-handle three days later.
Each and every tiny building block disengages from each other and into a great Lego cloud in the air like a miniature nuclear armament test performed by tiny plastic men. Just as the father's body is expelling the rest of the air from his lungs from the impact they fall back down in a gentle, soothing rain.
There is a great amount of profanity now emanating from the fallen figure. As the trembling of the house rumbles away he is confronted by the silhouette of his wife's head peering out the bedroom doorway, asking "What the hell are you doing? It's four in the morning!"
This does not go well with the lord of the castle, and he's distracted by anger at the question as he stands up. "I - ", he begins, as his left foot disassembles poor Pedro the Plastic Lego Dragon. He cannot complete the sentence as his forehead is now bouncing off the wall beside the washroom door.
As the man's defeated form crumples, his chest sliding down the wall and his head almost comically pointed up as his body moves towards the floor, his wife realizes that something is actually wrong and turns on the hallway light.
The sight to behold is not pretty. It is very colorful, mind you, with all the pretty blues and reds and yellows of the Lego pieces contrasting against the black and purple bruises forming on the man's now de-robed body. He's not making much noise now, just moving instinctively from side to side, trying to get away from the DANGER like a turtle flipped on its back. His hands are sort of sticking into the air and trembling a little, and as they shake the tiny decapitated head of a Lego grandmother loses it's adhesion to the left palm and falls with a tiny plink before the real-world mother starts screaming.
Eventually, of course, a great deal of that acoustic energy was directed towards a small remorseful child who was never allowed to play with, touch, or even go near Lego again for the rest of his Life.
**** **** ****
Yup, that's pretty much as I can describe it. I'm really not sure what Life Lesson I learned from that whole hideous experience. Sure, I felt some guilt over what I did as a child, but my Dad did recover from the shock except for a small but deep scar on the bottom of his left foot that never went away. Whenever we argued in the future from then on, he'd silently take off his left shoe and sock and display the angry red mark at me with a very accusing expression. Even if we were in a public place, like a restaurant.
I suppose the closest lesson I learned is, "Never Let Your Guard Down". Or, more accurately, "Never Put Your Naked Foot Down Anywhere In The Dark At Four In The Morning After You've Refused Your Child Ice Cream Money."
User Reviews
Submitted by mikethescottish (user info) at 2006-02-24 17:12:12 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Very long, but very good.
Submitted by BranDo (user info) at 2006-02-24 17:09:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
The greatest thing anyone has ever created with Lego.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-02-24 16:35:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
DERKA DERKA BURN THE DANISH LEGOS BURN THEM ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
Submitted by zoot124 (user info) at 2006-02-24 13:31:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
+2 for the title
-2 way too long
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2006-02-24 13:19:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This was a perfect read for a "I can't manage to concentrate on work" Friday.
Submitted by The_taste_of_Monkeys (user info) at 2006-02-24 11:13:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
It annoys me when peeps pluralise Lego into Legos, I couldn't tell you why though.
Submitted by evesapple (user info) at 2006-02-24 10:46:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
it's friday. aka no work day #5
Submitted by internetslacker (user info) at 2006-02-24 10:30:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Thank you for the positive comments! I'll post more excerpts from "Life Lessons" if enough Ubersiters wish me to do so...
Submitted by simple_catalyst (user info) at 2006-02-24 09:20:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
enjoyable.
Submitted by phuzzygish (user info) at 2006-02-24 07:30:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
That was an EXCERPT? Holy hell.
But it was hella funny. Nice one.
Submitted by sinna (user info) at 2006-02-24 06:18:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Holy shit buckets that was long. Just as well I wasn't planning on doing any work today.
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2006-02-24 04:50:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
In fact- I've submitted this for B@W
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2006-02-24 04:39:39 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Right - this post was truly excellent. HOWEVER. All you fuckers using 'ninja-like' all the time are ripe for a fall. I blame Ghola.
Submitted by Avals (user info) at 2006-02-24 04:23:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You're an evil, evil man.
Also, if a certain "Mr. Duck" is reading this: STOP STALKING ME, YOU CRAZY CUNT!
Submitted by Leodus (user info) at 2006-02-24 01:39:48 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
That made my day.
Submitted by toucan_sam (user info) at 2006-02-24 01:31:17 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
holy shit are you kidding me?
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2006-02-24 01:29:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2006-02-24 01:18:16 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I actually laughed uproariously for several minutes whilst reading this. My stomach now hurts.
Submitted by Magic_Monkey (user info) at 2006-02-24 01:07:50 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
* tears in eyes *
That was beautiful ...simply magical
Submitted by MrSparkle847 (user info) at 2006-02-24 00:19:48 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No, there was one toy that could not be broken; in fact it would actually defend itself very competently against all attackers. I am of course talking about Lego.
__________________________
When my sister took baths instead of showers, she would always leave Legos lying all over the tub (the bathroom I'm talking about was shared by only my sister and I, and the bath doubles as a shower). Now that I read this, I think she left them there simply so I would step on them.
Submitted by MrCoffee (user info) at 2006-02-24 00:06:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
waffled on at the start a bit, but i'm so glad i stuck it out for The Falling.
Fat people falling over will always warm my heart with chuckles