Tuesday, March 25, 2008

A Long Time Ago . . .


"You lost an arm, I've lost a foot, and Hannah's lost a finger."

What horrific thing is this, you wonder. I hear Sarah in the distance, unspooling this litany of horror, but I'm not worried. She's only describing to Grace a part of their newest fantasy obsessions--Star Wars. And lest you think I don't care that these movies have warped them into bloodthirsty lovers of amputation, I reassure you by the fact that right after the above bit of conversation, I heard Sarah say: "Oh, man, I've messed up my hair."


As you may remember, I introduced the girls to the original trilogy a while back and since then, they often slip into elaborate stories where they are the children of Luke and Leia. (Yes, by now they DO know that L & L are siblings . . . and yes, EEWWWW.)

But tonight at dinner Lynda and I spent many minutes detailing the ins and outs of how Darth Vader came to be (they haven't seen eps. 1-3 yet). Yes, there was confusion, yes, there were huge plot contrivances, and yes, I'm talking about the parents reaction to the story.

I can say that I felt a strong jolt of geek pride in my kids as they pestered me with questions about why Darth Vader did this and what are midichlorians and why exactly did Luke have a romantic arm (as Grace attempted to say robotic). They--especially young and naive Grace--were struggling to understand why Anakin would betray his friends Yoda and Ben to work for the Emperor. I tried to explain that Anakin felt frustrated because the Jedi Council didn't give him much to do (despite his outrageously high midichlorian count) and that he was worried about Padme's safety. But, again, since they haven't seen those movies yet, they weren't quite sure. (And no, I'm not sure that viewing the movies will help much . . .)


Anyway, I decided to explain the concept of betrayal in terms they were more likely to understand: "You see, if Corbin hurt Troy by helping out Sharpay, then that would be an act of betrayal."


Later, they got into an argument about if Kenobi should properly be called Obi-Wan (as Grace believed) or Ben (as Sarah believed). I pointed out that both names are proper. But the fact that they chose to argue about such a thing bodes well for their pop culture nerdishness in the future.

2 comments:

lulu said...

It's good to know that Stevie will have girls to choose from in the future, if that is his path. After all, "Big fat paychecks are back on the menu, boys!"

David said...

I thought the same thing!

Not the "fat paychecks" part, but I know what you mean.