Early on the morning of my 34th birthday, I found myself at Target in search of shampoo to get through a weeklong trip visiting a friend. There I was, standing in the checkout line, when something small caught my eye. Without hesitation, I grabbed it.It was a $5 Lego Mini Build of a Star Wars TIE Interceptor.This was no ordinary impulse purchase. It was a bell tolling me back to a long string of elementary school birthdays, when Lego sets always made their way into my hands — an occupational hazard of having two grandfathers who were engineers. I couldn’t pinpoint the last time I’d bought myself a Lego set, but the year certainly began with 19. As soon as I got back, I spilled the mere 48 pieces of the TIE Interceptor set across the desk in my friend’s guest room. Hour by hour, I’d return to it over the course of the day, snapping together a few more pieces, following one more half step in the instruction booklet, until finally, just before midnight, the build sat completed in the palm of my hand. These small sets — known in the Lego community as polybags — have since become a checkout-aisle purchase on every Target trip I make. For the low price of $5, I can briefly go back in time and enter the meditative trance of clicking bricks.