In praise of adults who play
Myles Turner, a center for the Indiana Pacers, recently corrected a reporter who asked him about “playing” with Lego, the colorful plastic building bricks and sets, during his time off the court.
“I build Legos,” he said. “I don’t play with Legos.” On social media, there are multiple videos of Turner talking about and showing off his extensive Lego collection. He has said that building is “literally all I do with my downtime.” But he was quick to dispel any notion that he was engaged in “play,” as if such an activity is too frivolous or childish.
Turner needn’t have protested. Why should any adult feel defensive about playing with toys?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this since I recently built my first Lego set, a full-scale 2,079-piece typewriter given to me by a friend. What started as a personal challenge has become an obsession. I’ve since built four more sets including a Polaroid One Step camera and Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Vega 5B, the plane she used in 1932 to become the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean.
When I wrote about the typewriter in my newsletter, Outtakes, I heard from readers but especially friends and acquaintances I’d known for years who wanted to “confess” — their word, not mine — their love of Lego. And toy trains. And die-cast model cars. When I asked why they’d never mentioned it before, they said that as much as they derived pleasure from these beloved objects and collections, they didn’t want to be judged for “playing with toys.”
This reticence seemed particularly prevalent among women who responded, and my guess is that it has to do with how boys and girls are socialized to play. When I was growing up, “boy” toys were about creation, imagination, and sports. “Girl” toys — at least the ones I unwrapped on the Christmas mornings of my childhood — were baby dolls and Barbies. Not once did I ever ask for a doll.
Then there was the Suzy Homemaker line of toy appliances like ovens, washing machines, and vacuum cleaners that according to an old TV commercial “make homemaking fun!” Toys for girls weren’t about playful creativity; they were training tools to indoctrinate future wives and mothers.
Some of the women who reached out to me said they now collect and play with toys like racetrack sets that they wanted as children — the kinds of things their brothers routinely received. These moments are as reparative as they are enjoyable for them, even if they’re reluctant to talk about it.
But men aren’t immune from the adults-who-play stigma either. In pop culture, men preoccupied with toys are sometimes portrayed as weak or immature. On “The Sopranos,” mob underling Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri (played by Steve Schirripa) was ridiculed by his wife for spending hours in their garage wearing a conductor’s cap and playing with his toy trains. “It’s my hobby, Janice,” Bobby pleaded. “Why ya gotta belittle it?”
As mobsters go, Bobby is sweet-natured. But his love of toys helped portray his character as someone less manly — and too soft to last in the ruthless company of killers.
Attention is starting to be paid to how toys can reinforce gender stereotypes and gender binarism. On the first of January, California became the first state to require that major retailers have gender-neutral toy aisles. Evan Low, a state assembly member, said he introduced the bill after an 8-year-old girl asked, “Why should a store tell me what a girl’s shirt or toy is?”
“Her bill will help children express themselves freely and without bias,” Low said. “We need to let kids be kids.”
Likewise, we should let adults be adults. And if that means losing themselves a little by playing with and collecting toys, it harms no one. That’s the impetus behind Lego’s “Adults Welcome” campaign, with some sets specifically marketed to “18+.” There’s nothing racy or objectionable about them, but many certainly do require an adult paycheck to buy them.
(Speaking of money, a friend who saved the Micronauts action figures he collected as a kid in the 1970s sold off part of his unopened stash to finance the down payment on his and his husband’s first home.)
Turner, who has a 7-foot Lego statue of himself as “Star Wars” villain Darth Vader, designed by Ekow Nimako, a renowned Lego artist, said that building is “a way for me to take my mind off of things.” Call it selfcare, nostalgia, or a way to relax that doesn’t involve staring at a screen. Toys fire our imaginations in ways that few things do and restore parts of ourselves we thought lost to the pummeling realities of adulthood. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “It is a happy talent to know how to play.”
Besides, why should kids have all the fun?