Slots

I remember when Lego came in mesh bags that bore only the brand sticker to tell you what to do with it. Lego wasn’t supposed to be anything yet – not a horse, not a Formula One racer, not a metropolis, certainly not a 2000-piece space station. Just a jumble of bricks after all, with deliberate knobs marring otherwise smooth surfaces. I remember when they simply came in red and yellow, white and green. I remember when things fell into each other without sound, hollow blocks one moment and the next a larger being, seamless save for the line revealing where they meet, still too thin for a sheet of dust and air to linger. I remember when everything had a place, an ever-present mate – but no one told you what it was, with whom or where. “Insert Tab A into Slot B,” but you had to go blindly. So aimless a direction, that we had to carry it over, beyond toys. Then, knob one to hollow two, plus a four-color option. Girl loves boy, boy may or may not love back. We chanted first came love as we played, reminding ourselves that that is what it is called, that is what we should do. Yet no one told us then how to make a first impression, how to smile, how to tilt our heads just so. No one told us how to start arguments with the words, “I feel.” No one told us that men and women were so different that the other was always two planets away. I remember when there were no t-shirts showing us 101 ways to do it on any hard surface. I remember when it all just happened. I remember when nothing came with manuals.

> After a cup of ridiculously expensive coffee, half a pack of lethal Mentoses, ten kikiam, and lots of moaning and groaning. Oh, yeah, and today's Philo class -- Heidegger. Wasak.