It felt great to once again immerse in childhood indulgences. Back in the 1990’s I had already played with origami and legos. In fact, I was so obsessed with building houses that I didn’t have with legos that I got a new huge set every year up until the early 2000’s. Then I moved away, and thus ended my friendship with legos. I finally reunited with legos over a decade later at Makerspace. For fear of getting overly emotional, I decided to play with other toys.

Admittedly, before the Makerspace session I had assumed that everyone would be playing with toys halfheartedly to pass time. However, as much as we tried to suppress our childhood playfulness, it all came out during the hour of intellectual play. Way back in the 90’s, I could not have dreamt of things like the Spinbot, Makey Makey, and LittleBits. I made a point of playing with all of them.

First up was LittleBits. My playmate was Alex. In a serious play date, Alex would be that all-knowing kid who’s teaching everyone else how to play with each toy, but in a good way of course. We connected the nodes in every possible permutation to see how differently each piece would act in different orders. We ended up with a spinning crane that made weird noises. I couldn’t help but wonder how could it would be if LittleBits teamed up with Lego to make electronic lego pieces. I would have loved to wire up my make believe houses with lights back in the days.

In the spirit of sharing toys, I moved over to the Spinbot to give someone else the chance to toy with electronics. The Spinbot required some minor assembling before it could spin recklessly. And when it did start spinning, I was mesmerized. I could not help but do nothing and sit there to watch this spider-like object spin around and around chasing an imaginary tail. It was very zen indeed. After the Spinbots had made enough overlapping circles with an interesting mix of color, I was seriously considering getting my own Spinbot and a nice piece of canvas to make some art to hang on my bare walls at home. The dual Spinbots were also good for robot fighting, among many other uses.

Again, in the spirit of sharing I moved on to the bananas and potatoes and tin foil at the back of the room. As it turned out, they were hacked by the Makey Makey. It was quite fascinating to see my playmates play games by tapping on the wall and play the piano by tapping on fruits. It all comes full circle back to the LittleBits – great things happen when there’s a closed circuit.

We’re never too old to keep playing, even in the 2010’s and the decades to come.