My kid is 11. When he is not playing Minecraft, he is building with Legos. He friggen’ LOVES Legos. We have never celebrated any gift-giving holiday with him in which Lego was not involved.  By now, there are roughly four million dollars worth of Lego in my house. I’d say a good $123 worth are stuck in the heating vents and $27 worth are in the vacuum cleaner.

This asshole lives on a steady diet of custom hair pieces and hard-to-find 1-bumpers

Occasionally, we all take on a family sorting project where we try to separate them by color (white, grey and black for all the spaceships, red, yellow and green for all the houses – stuff like that.) I got bored the other day and decided to start again, only this time, instead of by color, I started picking out all the Lego people.

At first, my son thought it was nice of me to be helping. But then he found a minifig he hadn’t seen in a while. Soon, he was obsessed. Every two minutes he’d get all excited and I’d hear,

“Oh, Mom! Look at this one! It’s a StarFisherSnackMonsterBlahDittyBlah!”

Then he’d shove a tiny Lego person halfway up my nose in an attempt to show me the differently shaped stripe it had on its helmet.

After a while I faded to the background. He kept going. This had turned into a thing. Then it turned into a secret thing. His sister, who had followed me out to the kitchen for a snack, was no longer allowed to help. He worked up until dinner time and for 10 minutes between bath and bed. The next day, he was at it again. All we could hear was the crash-crash-crash of Legos and the occasional whine from his sister about why she couldn’t come in his room.

“I’m making a surprise. I’ll show you all when I’m done. I swear!”

She huffed and puffed but he wouldn’t let her in. She was so pissed.

On the third day of secretive Lego building, he announced that he was finally ready for the big reveal. His sister, irritated beyond all common sense, proclaimed that she didn’t care. She was wasn’t about to appreciate ANYTHING her brother had spent so much time building. She summed up her feelings quite succinctly,

“So what. It probably doesn’t even have any girls in it.”

He answered that with the Spock Eyebrow. For the record, I love the Spock Eyebrow. He spent months learning how to do it properly and when he pulls that move you know he’s got an ace up his sleeve.

He disappeared into his room and returned with something hidden behind his back. 

“So, as you know, I was going through all my Lego people the other day. And I noticed that I had a lot of girl hair. I didn’t know what to do with any of it at first. But then I realized I had enough to make an army.”

Which is exactly what he did. He spent three days finding the perfect pieces to made this bad ass squad of lady fighters:

I think the Storm Trooper is my favorite.

My kid loves making Lego battles. And it never occurred to him that the Lego women wouldn’t want to fight in one. So now he has an elite squad of women fighters that are all highly trained in the murder arts. Well, all except for the woman in green – she’s an Endorian anthropologist. But I am assured that every squad needs a scientist to help them make strategic decisions. Plus, she leads the army of Ewoks so it’s not like she’s sidelined or anything.

His sister was so impressed that she even told him so.