#10 When less is more
Childhood memories — both real and belated — intertwine to defy logic.
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It was Luca’s third birthday. The first one after we moved to New York. His grandparents traveled to celebrate with us.
Their gift to their grandson was a blue case. The bottom was dark, the lid light. The yellow latches leaned toward orange.
Inside, 146 Lego pieces with the potential to become cars, boats, gas stations, parks, repair shops... The booklet offered five scenarios, but the imagination was limitless.
Luca’s eyes sparkled when he opened the box. His — and mine.
Lego didn’t exist in Brazil when I was a child. It was manufactured abroad, and the Brazilian economy was closed off during the 1970s.
The closest thing available was Playmobil. But it was expensive. I didn’t have any at home.
A neighbor, however, had a few sets. Occasionally, he’d invite the neighborhood kids over to play.
After the economy opened up, Lego finally arrived in Brazil. But by then I was already an adult, childless. No excuse to invest in such a costly toy.
In the United States, though, Lego was cheap and abundant. Everything you could possibly want, at prices I could afford.
After the blue case came a Lego City Starter Set, with a fire van, an ambulance, and a police motorcycle.
Then came two big buckets of loose pieces. To unleash creativity. A red one, with 200 pieces; a yellow one, with about 600.
My childhood neighbor’s Playmobil sets were the envy of the block.
There was just one problem.
The kid was really annoying. Like that “ball owner” character from Ruth Rocha’s1 story?
When I read that book, I wondered — did Ruth Rocha live in our neighborhood? Could she have based Caloca on my neighbor?
A father, adult and responsible, trying to get a book off the ground — the first I’d ever written — I started spending hours of my afternoons building Lego sets.
It was a matter of safety. The toy wasn’t recommended for kids under 3. Caio was only a year and a half.
What if he put one of those tiny pieces in his mouth? I couldn’t leave him alone.
That was the only reason, of course…
Ruth Rocha didn’t live in the neighborhood. She simply used a universal childhood situation to craft literature.
The neighbor kid probably never read the story. He didn’t have to — he acted exactly like Caloca from the book.
All it took was someone saying "no" and he’d sulk, pack up the toy, and send everyone home — even though he was dying to keep playing.
On the afternoons I should have been working on my book, I was healing from that childhood trauma. I played Lego until we couldn’t build anymore.
We made soccer stadiums, fire and police stations, houses, race cars, jails… Yes, one of the Starter Set mini-figures was a thief.
It was glorious. There were no limits to imagination.
To encourage the boys, I started inventing animals: owls, cats, dogs… even a Tyrannosaurus Rex with a moving head and tail!
The airplane may have been the pinnacle of my short-lived Lego Creator career.
Playing Lego with Luca and Caio, I was fulfilling a childhood longing. I was healing the trauma caused by the whims of the “Caloca” from my neighborhood.
The toy’s success was evident. At a certain point, all the family gifts started arriving via Amazon in the shape of Lego. I even got one from the boys for my birthday: a trailer pulled by a jeep.
We started collecting big things.
A fire station, an airport, a ship for ocean treasure hunters, a volcano explorer set...
Not to mention the loose sets that expanded the collections. The more Lego we had, the more Lego we wanted.
Until we overdid it.
Americans have a short saying for situations where you get better results by avoiding excess: Less is more.
When we returned to Brazil, our collection was so massive that playing Lego became impractical. We even tried, but it wasn’t fun anymore.
We spent so much time looking for pieces in that ocean of bricks that there was barely any time left to play. We’d get tired before finishing the builds.
Frustration took the place that once belonged to joy.
Time passed, the boys grew up, I grew up. (Finally!)
Before we left for Bali, all the Legos were packed into boxes and stored in the grandparents’ attic.
They left behind a longing for a time when we had fewer bricks, but much more fun during endless afternoons of pure imagination.
A Brazilian writer, author of a series of children’s books.