Today I have great news for all you parents out there who have kids who are very into Lego and who may have recently made some serious mistakes as far as presents.

Yes, I know I bring up Lego a lot. I have a son who’s obsessed.

It’s not just him. Lego is bigger than ever these days. There are even Lego alarm clocks. I always thought a Lego alarm clock was when Totty steps on a piece of Lego next to your bed in the morning trying to wake you up, and he wakes up the entire room and lands on you.

But every time we ask him what he wants, he says, “Lego.” He never asks for anything else.

Sure, you can say, “Who cares if he has nothing else? If you have enough Lego, you can build everything else!”

Not the way he plays with it. This is how it works: He gets the set, he spends the first hour fully building it, and then he spends the next several years slowly losing the pieces. The instructions are the first thing he loses.

When I was little, there were no instructions. Or all these strange, single-purpose pieces they have nowadays. So mostly we built houses. Nowadays there are instruction books, which look similar to those published by IKEA, which is basically adult Lego—you have these wordless pictures of smiling, hairless men putting together 3D models based on 2D pictures with no fingers.

“Um, I can’t see how the back is supposed to look.”

I think that when you turn each page, you should be able to see what the step looks like from the other side.

But everything comes in specific Lego sets nowadays. Not only are there specific sets, but there are specific worlds, like ninjas have their own world, and knights have their own world, and you can’t mix the worlds. There’s even a Jewish world called “Binyan Blocks,” which as far as I know is not affiliated with Hamodia.

Of course, you don’t have to buy the sets. You can go to official Lego stores and buy a bucket of exactly what you want, piecemeal. They have everything in its own container—red 2x2s, blue 2x3s, those skinny ones that you need to take apart with your teeth… They also sell a piece that pries apart the Lego so you don’t have to use your teeth. My kid has it buried in his piles somewhere. But he’s not afraid to use his teeth. He has Lego in his mouth all the time. Yet he will not eat chicken. My chicken cannot taste worse than Lego pieces that have been lodged in the bottom of my foot.

This is because the way you play with Lego is you spread it out all over the floor, and then you walk off and do something else. Even if the kid cleans it up, there’s no way to do that properly, because thanks to scientific advances, the Lego Company is able to create smaller and smaller pieces every day. They have a piece now that is one square by one square, has no protrusion on top, is ½ piece thick, and is the same color as most of my floors. My son’s typical set comes with 800 of these. And then there’s the hundred little swords that he started losing on day one. Those are brown. And I occasionally find them with my foot. I yell, “Ow!” and he goes, “You found one!”

And it’s all very nerve-wracking, because if I accidentally vacuum a piece, he will never again be able to build the nonsensical vehicle that someone paid 50 bucks for. And then you have to take into account the pieces that are confiscated by his rebbi.

“Your son was eating these in class. Please take them.”

“No.”

I say that all Lego should at least glow in the dark, so you can spot them when you’re walking around at night. I also say coffee tables should light up. And discarded shoes. And chairs with wheels.

Which brings me to the most exciting new Lego product in forever: Lego Slippers!

Don’t worry; these aren’t slippers made of Lego. Those would be the worst. They’re actually colorful slippers with really thick bottoms so you can step on a Lego piece and not get hurt.

Yeah, I already have something like that. It’s called Crocs.

But at least Lego is acknowledging the problem. Finally, they heard our cries. They were pretty loud.

Of course, some people are saying, “They create the illness and then sell you the cure?” Yes. This was the 66-year business plan.

The way the slippers work is you step on Lego piece and say, “Ow! I should have been wearing my Lego slippers!” Because you never expect to step on a Lego piece. It only happens by accident. If I know I’m going to be playing with Lego, I wear steel-toed work boots, because that’s what you’re supposed to wear when you’re building something.

And the good news is that they’re great for walking down the street on Tisha B’av and Yom Kippur! Except that they’re mostly red.

Pictured: It’s a well-lit room; just watch where you walk. There’s a Lego box right there!

The slippers should really be issued free to everyone who buys Lego, but right now, it’s only going to randomly selected customers in France. Probably because they sell a lot of Lego Eiffel Towers over there.

But if people respond well, they might start selling them everywhere!

Wait ’til you find a Lego in your slipper.

By Mordechai Schmutter

 Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia, The Jewish Press and Aish.com, among others. He also has five books out and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].