Legos cost my mother a recliner, a pair of tweezers and almost a diamond ring last weekend.
Any parent can tell you that Legos can be frustrating to put together and keep together, and painful to step on.
I think there’s a support group somewhere.
They’re also really awesome. My 21-year-old loved them when he was a child, and he begged to go to Legoland.
My 3-year-old nephew, Seb, is obsessed with Legos right now. He especially likes ‘Tar Wars’ Legos, with Luke ’Kywalker. Seb also loves, as he says, CP3-0.
Last weekend, his mother and I took him to the store so I could buy him Legos (because I’m a wonderful aunt, plus I try to buy his affection whenever possible).
He picked out a cool Star Wars ship, which was made for ages 7-12, but that’s beside the point.
My 21-year-old put the ship together and took a break before launching into the other pieces.
My nephew loved it, and when it was time for bed, he cried to stay up and play with it. Instead, my mom rocked him to sleep while he held it in a Death Star grip.
The next day, the ship came apart, and his parents sat down to reassemble it. One integral part was missing.
We looked on the rug, and then my mother suggested looking in the recliner where they’d rocked.
Sure enough, I saw it down in the seat. I got a butter knife to retrieve it, which only pushed it down farther.
My brother and I tipped over the chair to try to shake it out. When that didn’t work, I suggested tweezers. My brother considered going to get his medical bag from the truck for some instruments. Then, my mother suggested tweezers, and he said, “Good idea.”
(He tends to tune out certain people.)
I got the tweezers, and he let them fall into the crack of the chair. They were lost in the abyss. I got my longer tweezers, and he carefully excised the Legos piece with his steady surgeon’s hand.
Mom was annoyed because those were her “favorite” tweezers.
Fast forward to later that day. We went out to eat, and my mother commented that she didn’t have her wedding ring.
When she got home, she realized it wasn’t in her jewelry box. She remembered taking it off to try on my sister-in-law’s ring.
We started a search, using the flashlights on our smartphones. We looked through the wheat-colored carpet in the living room and up in the bedroom.
We looked under the cushion of the chair.
Finally, we turned over the chair and could feel something in the lining of the bottom. I got scissors and cut into the fabric.
We found lots of things: a blue plastic spider, a checker, a tiny bouncy ball, a peanut, a pretzel, a Cheerio, an M&M, a note my mother made about the cost to recover couches, a paper clip, a doll comb, three Legos, a Country Living magazine reply card, a Splenda packet.
No diamond ring.
My sister-in-law recalled that my mother had been unwrapping a gift that came with some makeup.
It made sense that she might have accidentally thrown away the ring.
My mother had only one rubber glove, oddly enough, and it was for the left hand. I put it on, and my brother got out the garbage.
It would not have been that bad were it not for the coffee grounds, smushy banana and leftover green-bean casserole. I found it amusing that my brother — an ear, nose and throat doctor — talked about how gross it was.
The ring wasn’t there.
Back inside the house, my sister-in-law checked under couch cushions where my nephew had been playing. “Maybe he picked it up — he might have thought it was a sparkly Lego,” she said.
In a movie, we’d call that foreshadowing.
My mother texted me shortly after midnight a day later.
She’d taken all the fabric off the bottom of the chair to see if the ring was stuck somewhere.
Then, it came to her.
Seb had been sitting in her lap, and they dumped out Legos and sifted through them, looking for certain colors.
There in the plastic toy container was her ring.
She said she’d learned her lesson for the 100th time about taking off her jewelry.
So, the story almost had a happy ending.
Diamond rings can be replaced; a good pair of tweezers is hard to find.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.