LEGOS turn 50  

Let me just begin with this: There is no greater pain a man can experience than stepping on a LEGO block in bare feet at 3:00 in the morning on your way to the bathroom.
Notice I didn’t include women in that analogy, as I know y’all have the whole childbirth card up your sleeves.
LEGO blocks -- the colorful, easy-to-choke-on Scandinavian building bricks that we all have inadvertantly stepped on in the middle of the night only to be brought to our knees from the bone-crippling pain -- celebrated their 50th birthday last Monday.
I can barely contain my excitement.
The brick design was patented a half-century ago by Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, and the blocks began their glorious journey into every child's toy box and/or esophagus, including the bottoms of my bare feet at 3:00 in the morning.
Did you know that LEGO has sold about 40,000,000,000 pieces – or 62 bricks for every person on Earth? Do you know that I’ve stepped on at least sixty of them during my children’s developmental years? That’s certainly more than my alloted share I’m sure. Do you know that LEGO blocks have accounted for more than half the profane language my kids learned overhearing me cry out in pain and uttering blasphemous adjectives after the bottoms of my feet had been reduced to powder?
I remember when I turned 47 I required cortisone shots in both heels because of damage done to the bones from stepping on so many LEGO blocks. As the pediatrist ground the needles into each heel and told me “this is going to pinch a little” I remembered remarking to my then spouse how much LEGO blocks would help stimulate our children’s creative juices and we should buy out every LEGO box in stock. Thanks Godt!
Those forty kajillion LEGOS, that's enough blocks to build a LEGO tower to the moon, and I wish somebody would, and leave them all there. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about stepping on them anymore. I think I have a permanent LEGO brick tattoed to my heel I’ve stepped on so many of those darling little bricks.
Do you know what my favorite LEGO pastime was? Trying to get the $%#@! LEGO out of the vacuum cleaner where it got stuck after I ran over it during household chores and now it makes this God-awful racket rattling around the sweeper brush every time I fire up the Hoover.
Do I sound a little agitated here?
I think I earned that right.
I had two kids.
They both loved to play with LEGO blocks.
We had LEGOS everywhere.
I developed an annoying and spine shifting shuffle in my step out of fear of stepping on the next LEGO block in the middle of the night. I couldn’t pick up my right foot.
The doctor would call it an intermediate bone bruise.
A moderate contusion.
I know medical lingo.
I was told once by a doctor that I had acute nasopharyngitus.
I thought I had a month to live.
Until I found out acute nasopharyngitus is simply a bad cold in your nose.
I was not amused.
An intermediate bone bruise means the doctor is going to charge me $45 for that bit of rocket scientry and tell me to take two Tylenol and call if the discomfort persists.
Calling the pain inflicted by stepping on a LEGO at three in the morning discomfort is like calling labor pains a mild case of indigestion.
The worst LEGOS were those tiny advanced LEGOS, the ones they made for older kids that were the size of a slice of Dentyne gum and came with two tiny pronged widgets that felt a lot like a centipede’s sting when stepped upon.
You don’t know what a centipede’s sting feels like?
That’s because after being stung by a centipede your entire body goes numb and you lose the ability to manufacture saliva for about a day and a half. That’s what happens when you step on a LEGO block. Your legs goes numb up to about the middle thigh and you can’t spit for three days.
LEGO blocks are like rice thrown at your wedding.
Five years later and you’re still finding them under the front seat.
So Happy Birthday LEGO.
I can tell you this Mr. Christiansen. I’ve got two words for you and they’re not Happy Birthday.
In fact, they’re the same words I used the last time I stepped on a LEGO.