My Story
​
Grandfather's Hammer
From the start, I loved to build. Especially, making things with Legos. My father, on the other hand, he wasn’t a fan of it, but my mom was a huge fan. At a young age, my father and I built houses with our sofa (The sofa was very easy to move), and in few months, we could build a 2 story house that little old me could get in. While my dad did the building, I designed it. Now I think of it, my dad was just trying to not buy anything new. In South Korea, I started to go to lego after school, I hoped to go to a creative class, but they only had robotics. However, there were many free bricks, not for taking, in the waiting room. In there, I built much creation, such as a pyramid and a statue. A few months later, my team won the Lego robotics competition and got the Prime Minister Trophy. Even though we have built a giant 2 footed robot, my curiosity was still in the 4 legged walkers like the AT-AT in Star Wars (Big Fan), because it seemed that 4 legged walkers could be more decorated than the 2 footers, which in my opinion was not good looking walker. Afterward immigrating to America, I helped as an assistant for a small lego club, still robotics but can be more decorated than my last one, in my private school, St.Martin’s (Annapolis, Maryland). I was good at most stuff, like checking for miss piece, wrong placing, and way more (Most of them were 4th graders), but something that even I sometimes forget was fastening the pieces completely. So when I visited my grandparents on their long business trip (almost for 25 years!) in Jakarta, Indonesia. My grandfather, a factor designer, made me a metal hammer for my builds, afterward, my creation would not look so badly fastened. People would ask me why not use liquid glue. Well, I sometimes need to take apart or make upgrades to the creation, if I use liquid glue, I could not upgrade when I have the chance nor take it apart. Yes, we have the orange tool that is given to us to every set to take it apart, but they do not give us a tool that we could use to fasten our creation, that was my big reason why that hammer was so important to me. Now, I don’t need it since I have grown older, but it reminds me that I need to fasten my builds.
Before this, I always bought sets, but I saw this wall of Legos behind the store, because of this, a new frontier was made for me. First, my creation started out like all beginner’s creation, a big, wrongly placed, clumsy trash. After perfecting my skill for about a year, I moved space ships to warships. Then I begin to realize that my resource will not last forever. So I had 2 choices, buy more pieces or build it smaller. As I said it earlier, my father hates spending money. So it was obvious that I would start to build it smaller. The large warship became a small model. Then a few months later, I got my hand on a piece that will look great if it was a propeller, after more research, the age of flying came to my little lego world. The plane would become a great deal for me as I am still developing new planes pretty much all week. Then the tanks came. As my resource got bigger, the caterpillar track could be made. The tank started out as a Light Panzer, a light German tank during the Second World War, but it became heavier like the Sherman and the T-34. The tank also became a great deal.
One of the most delightful moment is when the store brings a new piece such as a wheel and axle. This could be used to update my past creation or could be built new creation, such as a car. Before I pack the pieces, I just had to test and built since you never know that piece could be useless. I built a creation with the new piece, but you have to remember that there are pieces back at home that could be replaced. Knowing this information, I built a model, and let me tell you that it isn’t always pretty.
After becoming an 8th grader, I was given a task of finding service hours, and since I was accepted NJHS, National Junior Honor Society, I had to do more service hours than my other friends. After doing all my hours, I founded that library service hour was actually pretty enjoyable, so I go every Saturday on the beginning week of a month. Then, I thought of the potential that I could do with my Legos and my creations. First, I could help people to build without instructions. Secondly, my creation could be sent to one of the refugees for children. To make them happen, I needed shipping fee and bricks, so I made this site so I can make that happen. And this site was created by the help of WIX.
I believe that children’s thoughts and imaginations should be tightened and never be loose, it should be tightened with a gift that is tightened from a hammer.
P.S.
Building creation was way enjoyable than making this site. The most back-breaking part of the work was taking the picture.
​
P.S.S.
I would take any picture of a vehicle (Highly recommend WW2) and built it for USD15. ​
​
​
​
​
McLean VA. Autumn 2018.
​