Tragic Sandwich

The Harried Mom has a post about showing Star Wars to her 4-year-old for the first time. It was originally released when I was eight, and it made a powerful impression on me. When we went to see it again (something that we almost never did), I wore a white turtleneck and white jeans. My mother said, “Why are you dressed as a nurse?”

My senior year in college, some campus organization screened all three films in the original trilogy. A few thousand people showed up (I know that’s true, because I know how many people that room can hold, and believe me, it was full).

I was on the fencing team that year, and went with one of my teammates. We went all MST3K on the lightsaber duels (and this was long before MST3K came to be), calling them like they were fencing matches. We were hilarious–if you fence. We were annoying and obscure if, like most of the world, you don’t.

In between Empire and Jedi, I was in the ladies’ room listening to other girls debate whether they liked Han or Luke better. I thought, “You know, I always wanted to be Luke.”

A week later, I was walking across campus to a fencing meet, wearing my whites and carrying a bag with my electric foil, and it hit me: I was Luke Skywalker.

Very few of us actually get to live out our childhood dreams like that.

Photo by ChrisM70, via Flickr.