Star Wars Day

Newsletter 2024-05-05

I don’t need much of a push to celebrate anything. It doesn’t matter if it’s your birthday or the anniversary of the day you bought new curtains. If it’s an excuse to eat cake and skip chores, I’m all in. Weeks ago, my thirteen-year-old, Betsy, announced that she wanted to celebrate Star Wars Day with me. For those who aren’t sufficiently nerdy (or those who occasionally get fresh air and sunshine and don’t spend their entire lives online), May 4th is an unofficial holiday for the famous sci-fi franchise due to the pun, “May the Fourth be with You.” I was immediately on board with Betsy’s request, but I was also slightly suspicious. Our family hasn’t made a big deal about Star Wars Day in the past. Also, Betsy is a teenager and way too cool to be hanging out with the likes of me. Still, I’m not one to look a gift Taunton in the mouth. I accepted Betsy’s invitation, especially because she extended it to me and not to her equally nerdy mother. I’m honored to be the first person Betsy thinks of when it comes to playing make-believe with laser swords in space. I made the right call by never growing up. 

Betsy simply proclaimed that she wanted to do Star Wars Day. The rest was up to me. It was hard to suss out exactly what she wanted. Star Wars Day isn’t like Christmas or Halloween. (At least not yet. Give Disney time and they’ll get it there.) There’s no playbook for what to do like there is with real holidays. Star Wars Day mainly exists online. I searched Facebook for Star Wars events in my area. There weren’t many. A few bars were hosting Star Wars trivia, but Betsy can’t drink and also isn’t that type of nerd. She’s the kind who thinks X-wings are cool, not the kind who knows the names and histories of every background character in the Mos Eisley Cantina. There’s an old book where literally every alien in that room gets a short story. Lola owns it, which is a big reason I married her. There wasn’t much else happening locally. A bakery had Star Wars-themed pastries and a roller rink had a costume skating thing. Neither appealed to Betsy. Even she has limits for how uncool she’s willing to be with me. I offered to hang out at home with her all day playing Star Wars Battlefront on Xbox and streaming all the movies, but she shot down that idea, too. To her, Star Wars Day meant leaving the house and, more importantly, spending money. That was the real reason she approached me instead of her mom. If you want someone to make dumb impulse purchases in the name of fun, you go to Dad. I’ll never let my bad reputation go to waste.

The biggest event taking place on Star Wars Day was the re-release of Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. Actually, the re-re-release. It was re-released once before in 3D. I paid to watch it in theaters that time, too. I wasn’t lying about that dumb impulse purchase thing. This year is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the movie’s original release. It came out when I was Betsy’s age. That makes me approximately a million years old now. Going to see The Phantom Menace on its original release day is one of my core childhood memories. I was so excited in the lead up to that movie. It came out on a school day, so I wasn’t able to go to the midnight release. Instead, a friend’s aunt bought tickets and took us to the theater the second the final bell rang. It was the first new Star Wars movie in my lifetime, and I could not have been more excited. It was one of my earliest lessons in disappointment. I had yet to develop the endearing level of pessimism that protects me today.

I liked the movie well enough when I first saw it, but as the initial excitement wore off, I finally realized it wasn’t that great. Not that any movie ever could have lived up to the insane number of expectations I put on it. I could have done without midi-chlorians, Jar Jar Binks, and seven thousand jokes about poodoo. In hindsight, I think George Lucas fell victim to his own success. He became too big and powerful to have an editor. We all need someone in our lives to tell us “no” sometimes and crush our hopes and dreams a little. That’s the single biggest benefit to marriage. Without someone to check him on set, Lucas turned out a two and a half hour kids movie with a weird amount of talk about trade federations and tax policies. The movie has its moments (including the single best lightsaber fight in the entire series), but, as an adult, I would have been perfectly happy never seeing it again. Betsy changed all that. It was the one activity on Star Wars Day she insisted we had to do. I couldn’t say no to her or the symbolism of returning to see the movie I first saw at thirteen, but this time with a thirteen-year-old of my own. There’s a reason Star Wars prints money. I’ll never stop paying for nostalgia.

Photo by Studbee on Unsplash

Celebrating Star Wars Day was Betsy’s idea, but I extended the invitation to the rest of the family. Taking one kid and excluding the rest from an activity that could easily accommodate everyone is the fastest way to start a war, and not the fun star kind. Only my eleven-year-old, Mae, opted out. She had committed to doing a scout service project that morning and refused to bail. She has integrity, which is annoying. She must get it from her mother. Also, she doesn’t like Star Wars that much. She was mainly sad that she’d miss out on movie theater popcorn, but I promised to bring some home for her. Sometimes being a good dad is easier than it looks.

Finding a theater proved to be a challenge. Sadly, the one in our suburb wasn’t getting the movie. It’s my favorite theater in the world because no one else goes there, turning each showing into our own private screening. There’s a reason they keep going bankrupt and getting bought out, but that’s their problem, not mine. The closest big screen that had The Phantom Menace was fifteen miles away. I extended the invitation for Star Wars Day to our usual group of friends and family members. My brother-in-law, Jerry, checked and discovered that showing was completely sold out. I was shocked. Apparently there were lots of other nostalgic adults returning to see a subpar movie with next-generation versions of their past selves. I extended my search even farther and found yet another showing, this one in the morning. The website showed every seat was still available, so I didn’t bother buying tickets in advance. I invited everyone to come back to our house afterwards to watch the rest of the prequels, but this time for free. All things being equal, I’d rather have my nostalgia at a budget rate.

Half an hour before it was time to leave for the movie, we had a crisis. Betsy didn’t have a Star Wars shirt. I didn’t realize that was a prerequisite for the day until that moment. Lola had ordered one for herself, and our two youngest girls already had some that fit them. They had probably been passed down from Betsy years ago. The worst part of getting older is you outgrow all your best stuff. I wasn’t planning on wearing a Star Wars shirt. I have twenty copies of the same plain t-shirt in several different colors. With any luck, I won’t have to buy clothes again for the rest of my life. Betsy, though, looked dejected at her lack of Star Wars gear. It was almost time to leave if we were going to make it to the distant movie theater on time. I told her to jump in the van. We made the world’s fastest Walmart speed run. Surprisingly, there were only two Star Wars shirts to choose from. The most over-merchandised sci-fi property in the history of the world is running low on stock. Betsy picked out two copies of the same shirt: one for me and one for her. She’d already committed to being dorky for the day, so she didn’t mind if we matched. Twinning harder than ever, we rushed back home to grab the rest of the family. It was Star Wars time.

We made the right choice by picking the distant theater. Instead of being packed, the place was deserted. Besides our group, the only other people there were a dad and his young daughter. When they got up to go to the bathroom, we really did have the entire theater to ourselves. After twenty-five minutes of previews, the movie finally began. Even after all these years, my heart still beats a little faster when I see that text scroll across the screen. Then everything else in the movie happened and my enthusiasm dulled a bit. It is a very, very long film. I can’t sit still that long anymore even when it’s something I enjoy. Twitter has ruined my attention span. Waffle, however, was entranced. She’s eight, which seems to be the movie’s target demographic, trade disputes notwithstanding. Multiple times, she exclaimed, “This is the best movie ever!” She didn’t remember that we used to watch it all the time, especially in the van when going on trips. That was three or four years ago, which was literally half a lifetime ago for her. I have virtually no permanent memories from when I was that age, so I can’t blame her for forgetting. After seeing it again, perhaps this will be one of her own foundational childhood moments that she’ll repeat in another twenty-five years when they re-re-re-release the movie. I’ll be more than happy to watch it with her. I’ll be old enough for the senior citizens discount by then. 

After the movie, the whole group came back to our house, where I made the world’s finest grilled cheese sandwiches. I’d like to say the secret ingredient is love, but really it’s using enough butter to choke a horse. That saying was especially appropriate because it was Kentucky Derby Day. As far as I know, no horses in the race died from dairy products. We turned on Attack of the Clones on both downstairs TVs. That’s when Betsy disappeared. A friend messaged her about playing Roblox, which was a better offer. I can’t blame her. I can only take so much of me, too. Betsy rejoined us an hour later. She took over the TV in the living room to play Star Wars Battlefront while sitting in a spot where she could also see the movie on the TV in the dining room. She was living her best life up until dinner time, when she abandoned us again, this time for a sleepover. I’m happy I was able to hold her attention for even part of the day. With a teenager, that counts as a massive win. As for the adults, we made it through all the prequels and then part of Rogue One. Not that we paid that close of attention. We were a talkative and lively bunch. The jello helped. I made the regular kind for the kids and the shot kind for the grown-ups. That can make any movie fun. It was my favorite part of the day because I could get up to go to the bathroom whenever I wanted. Mae was happy, too, because I brought home a massive bucket of movie theater popcorn as promised. It was the kind of day I’d love to repeat. I can’t wait to pay Disney even more money at the same time next year. 

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time. 

James