Age 35, and Something Went Snap

When he learned Legoland was holding a national competition to hire a new model builder, Hunter made it to the semifinals with the scorpion he assembled when given a bucket of 2,000 Lego pieces and 45 minutes to build any animal. He'd taught himself to make a sphere out of squares, the required skill test for any model shop hire. Hunter lost the contest, but networked in the Lego community and visited the park often enough that the model shop manager remembered him when another opening came up later. The pay is modest -- top scale is about $45,000 a year -- but there's a 10 percent employee discount on Legos, a perk that adds up with a hobby that AFOLs say can easily devour thousands of dollars a year.

The model builders take turns running inspection before the theme park opens each morning. In Miniland, they make sure the presidential motorcade zipping along Pennsylvania Avenue hasn't been crushed by a renegade possum overnight, and that no seagulls have strategically bombed the White House. They make sure enthusiastic AFOLs haven't pinched any of the discontinued bricks -- transparent ones are particularly coveted -- for their private collections.

And they smile at their own inside jokes, such as the home brewery that the model builders constructed and hid atop the model of the Kennedy Space Center, and the Elvis impersonator amid the crowd of mini-commuters at Grand Central Terminal. Then there's the Lego body of Jimmy Hoffa, buried where no tourist will ever see him, deep within a column of the new Freedom Tower in fake Manhattan.

It's an attention to detail shared by the AFOLs who gather for a monthly play date in a deserted lounge at George Mason University's Arlington campus, where a dozen or so fans brought their Legos by the giant tub and jumbled boxful on a recent Saturday.

Georgetown mathematician Judy Miller's onion-domed reproduction of St. Basil's Cathedral posed delicately beneath the yellow crane that Abraham Friedman was building higher and higher. Michael Harrod smiled bravely when a clumsy neighbor accidentally decapitated his Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties sculpture.

"We used to have rules, bylaws, a lot of bureaucrats and heavy structure, and it killed us," Friedman, a software developer, says of the Washington Metro Area Lego Users Group, or WAMALUG. "We used to have two-hour meetings and we'd argue and discuss things forever. So we dissolved the constitution, got rid of the rules. Now we're just a social club. We hang out and build things."

Besides showing off their latest projects and discussing construction challenges, members also share sorting strategies. Dan Rubin, a 27-year-old lawyer from Silver Spring, prides himself on his system of sorting by shape, rather than color, the 400,000-some Lego pieces that his fiancee has consigned to their basement.

"It's easy to become obsessive about acquiring a certain piece instead of building," observes Magnus Lauglo, who is just coming out of a nine-month castle phase to concentrate on military vehicles. His green tanks reflect a love of military history and technology rather than a political statement, Lauglo says, adding: "I don't build in a sociopolitical vacuum, though. It's impossible to build these and not be aware there's a war going on."

Friedman is casting a critical eye on his finished crane. Judging from the width of the boom and the size of the mini-figure construction worker standing on site, he quickly calculates that the crane is not to scale: It wouldn't be high enough to erect a skyscraper in real life. He is disappointed, but considers the four hours he spent building it well spent.

"Just the act of snapping the pieces together is so satisfying," he explains, not even looking down as his fingers connect one brick to another. "That click when they go together."