When My Favorite Domer was little, he spent an inordinate amount of time playing with Legos.

In his little hands, these hard plastic colored bricks became spaceships. Or villages. Or monsters. Or whatever.

A $5 box of Legos was the perfect reward for a boy eager to do his best, to help out around the house, to bring home A’s.

Bribe, you say? Hey, whatever works — as long as he picked them up, and I didn’t have to step on them with bare feet!

On summer days, or weekends during the school year, his friends would come over to design and fabricate entire Lego worlds, complete with people. And vehicles to move them from place to place.

I lost track of how many pictures I took of him with his finished creations to submit to the Lego magazine.

“What do you get for winning?” I’d ask.

And he’d show me some expensive, one-of-a-kind set that he had to have.

Sadly, he never won.

But that didn’t dampen his enthusiasm. Or stop him from dreaming and creating.

Four years ago when Domer headed off to Notre Dame, he packed up his precious creations and stored them in boxes.

It’s the end of an era, I thought, figuring maybe his kids would get some enjoyment out of them one day.

Because plastic bricks don’t go bad, do they?

I was wrong. Not about the bricks, but about the end of an era.

Because boys really never outgrow their toys, you know.

Over Christmas break, Domer got a notion to break out his Legos. To look, once again, at his creations.

To see whether they were as “cool” as they once were.

They didn’t disappoint. You think I’m kidding, right? Well, you’d be wrong. See for yourself:

Trip down Lego Memory Lane