A boy, must have been two or three, skipped onto the A Train yesterday morning. He had a red baseball hat pulled down over his tight black curls. He held an asymmetrical Duplo tower with both hands.

I raised my eyebrows. In my house, I’ve never seen a Lego/Duplo construct retain structural integrity for more than thirty seconds, so this struck me as an overly courageous endeavor. Luckily, the boy got a seat right away and his mother stood over him. I thought he might have a chance after all.

It turns out his luck ended with the seat. Before the next stop, the Duplo tower crashed to the floor of the subway and the blocks scattered across the aisle. The young mother dutifully tracked them down and returned the pieces to her son. I thought it was cool of her not to get upset. After all, if the mother allowed the Duplo blocks on the train in the first place, she can’t really have expected any other result.

As we rode the train downtown, the boy began constructing another tower. The mother watched patiently, but several other passengers were skeptical. Sure enough, before the next stop, down came the bricks. The mother gathered the blocks again, this time with lots of help.

“Maybe not on the train?” said one of the helpers. The young mother smirked and put the blocks in her bag.

I’m not sure what the smirk meant, but I decided she was saying, “Yeah this sucked, but you should have seen what is was like in my apartment when I told him he couldn’t bring them.”