Tower Building, The Unstoppable Impulse

by Phil

If you witness a father playing with their children and toys are involved, I'm willing to bet that you'll eventually see every one of those fathers participate in the exact same activity.

Tower Building.

If there are toys around that can be stacked, those toys will be stacked. Every father I've ever been around has done this with their child. It's a commonality that runs through the entire history of humankind, I'm sure. The cavemen fathers were out in the fields with their kids, piling rocks and mastodon bones, grunting with approval at the glorious new heights they had reached.

It's a rather strange desire. Being a self-admitted victim, I'm not sure why it happens. No one would ever describe me as an engineer. I never wanted to be an architect. I draw things. I paint things. While I can do small stuff around the house, I don't really build things. And yet, put a pile of toys in front of me and we're seeing how high we can get.

One of my standard creations as my son is distracted

by internet radio from the TV. He's thinking,

"RADIO? On the TV? Wha'?"

It's actually a challenging activity. Not only do you have to defy gravity when you put that round object right in the middle of your pile, but you're often lucky to even get past the third object at all. We can't forget that there are kids around, often infants and toddlers who can't recognize your impending genius. If you have an object, they most likely will want it too. When I put one toy on top of another, my son suddenly needs that toy. If I grab another toy to replace the second stage in my tower, he's discarded the one he just took for the replacement. Once his attention is diverted by something, I can usually make a bit of progress before he crawls over and knocks it down. While I have the inclination to build, I believe he must have an equally strong drive to destroy. So when he loses interest in dashing my creations (and dreams of breaking world records), crawling off to something more fascinating, I revel in the moment and build toward the heavens. THE HEAVENS!!!!

This actually makes me think of the Tower of Babel in the bible. For those who are uninitiated, there's a story in the bible when all of humanity spoke a single language and came together to build a city tower "whose top may reach unto heaven." God was upset and threw a wrench into the works by creating multiple languages so the people were confused and therefore couldn't work with one another. It's often read as a tale of humanity's hubris, believing that they could reach heaven with something built by their own hands.

Put into the toy stacking context, I'd like to suggest an alternate reading for the story. I think this was some sort of father/son retreat weekend. When you get that many dads and kids' toys together, you know something monstrous will result. It wasn't hubris! It was an irrepressible impulse laced with fun and teetering objects constantly on the verge of collapse.

It's strange that the drive is so strong. It's not like I sit on the floor with my son determined to make a skyscraper out of as many of his toys as possible. I just find myself doing it. Before he came along, I never did this with any of my own possessions. I wouldn't sit at my desk and pile all the objects thereon on top of each other. That would be weird.

I imagine that it will subside as he gets older and his toys are less blocky, less stackable. Action figures don't really make for good bricks. Hey. That actually sounds like a challenge. Are the toy makers defying me by introducing more difficult shapes!? Maybe this phase won't end.