12 frogs

I was at the Lego store in Downtown Disney, and found two amazing things.

The first was a series of bins on a wall filled with special-parts Legos — fence pieces, trees, purple bricks, little black steering wheels, blocks slanted on one side, translucent green blocks — the kinds of pieces that you usually have to buy a kit to get. And for a fixed price, you could get whatever you wanted from the bins if you could fit the pieces into a plastic cup with a closed lid. I mean, how cool is that? Of course I spent some time figuring out the optimum placement of parts in the cup. There was a small bubble-space on top, I squeezed two trees in that.

But there weren’t any of the Lego people in the bins. I always liked the minifigs, but never had many. I had only one as a kid. He had a red torso, pants, and helmet. I didn’t see any of the minifigs around, so I decided to ask a staff person. All the employees at Disney (“cast members”) are really, really helpful, probably under penalty of termination. This guy clearly recognized a fellow nerd when I asked him if they had any of the Lego people. His answer was the second amazing thing.

“Have you seen our big kit?” he said, “it has thirty people and a monkey.”

Thirty people and a monkey! I knew in that instant what Lisa was going to get me for my birthday.

She knew it, too. She is very understanding of my quirks.

So not only do I have thirty minifigs and a monkey, but I have little Lego people accessories: a pizza, a stretcher, bicycles, helmets, tools. I know they will show up in digital photos soon. Because once I build bizarre Lego scenes with my little yellow plastic people, I’m going to need to take pictures of them.