May the force be with me!
I am old enough to remember when the first Star Wars films came out. My little brother, Lowell, was a serious fan of the first three films, paradoxically actually numbers 4, 5, and 6 in the planned series. He was the lucky owner of blue Star Wars bed sheets (with a hot Princess Leia kneeling in front of an odd-looking Han Solo), the soundtrack from the original film, and countless action figures about four inches high. We listened endlessly to the cantina music on the LP record and had long discussions about whether Chewbacca was a real creature or not. Lowell probably slept every night in those blue sheets. He set up battles for his figures in the sand dunes of the undeveloped desert behind our house...until the day he got tired of Star Wars and buried the figures in that same desert. According to family lore, Lowell did this on purpose as a new twist on the final fate of Luke, Leia, Chewbacca, and Han Solo. The Dark Side prevailed! Lowell, however, claims he just forgot them out in the desert. Forever. A house was built on that lot in later years, once and for all eliminating any possibilities for him to retrieve his childhood collection. No one in our family missed the toys. Star Wars was part of our childhood circa 1977-1983 and well, who needed a not-so-gently-used collection of plastic action figures? Like disco and pop rock candy, no one really expected a return of the Jedi or anyone else from Star Wars.
Flash forward about 20 years: I was in an antique shop in the Old Town of Stockholm. To my amazement I spied a set of Star Wars action figures at an exorbitant price! I was shocked, to say the least. Being the good big sister I am, I was sure to tell Lowell about his great loss of potential income. That's what can happen when you bury action figures in the desert. Too bad a house covered them. He, however, was quick to inform me that at least our mother had been wise enough to save his blue Star Wars sheets. She had carefully packed them in a plastic storage bag, nonetheless. Yeah, yeah, yeah whatever, I thought, still envisioning the amount of hard cash I might have procured for that original set of figures. Little did I know just how important those blue Star Wars sheets would be to me in the not-so-distant future.
Flash forward another few years and I was now the mother of two boys and Star Wars was not the last thing on my mind--it was not on my mind at all. In 1999 and 2002 when Star Wars I and Star Wars II came out in the theatres, I barely noticed. I was still trying to process just what the order was exactly--so if Star Wars II was coming out now what does that make the second Stars Wars film I saw in 1980? And exactly how old would Obi-Wan Kenobi be, and was Yoda really a Muppet, and so how did Darth Vader get to be Luke's father, and were Anakin and Darth really the same person...? These questions flittingly crossed my mind and then bothered me no more. Or should I say, I did not think they would bother me anymore? For the Force was with me too--only I did not have to deal with it until the year 2005, 28 years after I saw the first Star Wars film at the local movie theatre in Palm Desert, California. In 2005, Star Wars III premiered. This event in itself was barely noticed by me, but alas, as I said, I am the mother of two boys who at this point were five and seven years old. They did not miss this eventful turn of rebel fate.
Seemingly overnight, Star Wars was everywhere! Somewhere between the passing fancy of Pokémon cards and the spring ritual of marble games, Star Wars emerged as the number one obsession of every boy in the Western world. All of the boys at school talked only about Star Wars. How could I have not seen it coming? I had barely taken notice of the premiere and now I had to listen to tales of who got to see it opening night (who takes a seven-year-old to a midnight showing of an PG-13-rated film premiere?). Suddenly, my two innocent boys knew the whole story and all the characters in the newer films. When I was not looking, it seemed that all the stores in town replaced their entire toy stock with Star Wars paraphernalia. Why was Playskool making chubby figures of Obi-Wan Kenobi, easy-open space ships and toys with names like "Duel with Darth Maul" with an age-recommendation 3+? For all the new three-year-old fans? Little did I know just how much this new fad would affect my life. Up to this point, my boys had still been happily watching movies like Jungle Book and Mary Poppins. This era was soon to end. They begged to see the new Star Wars films. After several playground discussions with other parents, I decided the films were too scary for my boys. But what luck! On a rainy Saturday afternoon, one of our TV channels showed The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi. We dutifully recorded them. Everyone was happy. I was pleased to realize that films from 1980 and 1983 were refreshingly tame compared to most modern movies. Satiated and unfazed to be watching the films out of order, my boys obsessively watched these two films again and again. Soon enough, however, they began to ask for episode IV, Star Wars (yes, that would be the first film made). Being the good mother I am and feeling confident that the first film could not be scarier than the two episodes we had been watching, I went to the video store to rent Star Wars. The clerk laughed at me. The film was not available. No one wanted to rent a video of Star Wars when there were boxed DVD sets of the trilogy to be bought. We caved in and bought the set for the boys so they could see Star Wars. Did it matter to them that we have no DVD player and that they had to watch the film on our computer? Not in the least. Their happiness was complete.
The year 2005 will be the one to remember as the year Star Wars entered our lives and my boys became experts on TIE-Fighters, clone wars, and Wookiee Catamarans. This was the year they received not one but four Star Wars books full of meticulous information about every aspect of life in the galaxy far far away--books they read daily. This was the year they either purchased or received 10 different Star Wars Lego sets, which they may not take outside lest they bury the figures in our garden. This was the year we hosted a Star Wars birthday party, complete with Darth Vader invitations, boys dressed up like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker, and a homemade Death Star pińata which, fittingly, was very hard to destroy. This was the year that they lived in Star Wars t-shirts, impressing their friends with the glow-in-the-dark Yoda. This was the year that, for the second time in my life, I listened to a Star Wars soundtrack endlessly.
But I have a confession: I am not really all that interested in Star Wars. I have realized that Chewbacca is indeed an actor in a furry suit and that Yoda is indeed controlled by the Muppet-master Frank Oz; but beyond a vague sense of nostalgia for the older films, this Star Wars craze is just not my thing. I have tried to watch the films with my boys, but always end up taking a little snooze on the couch or picking up a magazine to read. Some days, my boys talk non-stop about some battle or some character or some dialogue. My eyes will glaze over and I will respond with the few lines which make them think I am interested: "Why do you think he did that?" or "What happened next?" Sometimes they catch me. More than once, I have been reprimanded for mistakes: "No, Mom, it was Luke who got his hand cut off, not Obi-Wan Kenobi!" or "C-3PO belongs to Luke, not Leia!" My older son has even appealed to my interest in linguistics: "You know, Mom, Yoda speaks a different dialect but we understand him anyway."
Alas, as tired as I am of the rebel world, it seems that Star Wars is here to stay in my home. My boys have only recently seen Star Wars I, meaning I have two more to suffer through--I mean, see with my family--at some point. I take comfort in reminding myself that it could be worse--my boys are not running around knocking over the neighbors' mailboxes for fun. They are sweet, peaceful boys who love the age-old story of good versus evil. They cheer every time Darth Vader returns to the good side. They feel no sympathy for the evil Darth Maul when he disappears into the hole, meeting his death cut in two pieces. I can accept that. And the blue bed sheets? My brother, Lowell, being the ever-loving uncle he is, sent them to my boys as a present. Despite the fact that they are almost 30 years old, they look bright and clean (thanks Mom!). My boys take turns sleeping on them, probably with dreams of a galaxy far far away every night when they go to sleep. May the force be with us all!