day squared

Ok, so I quit. I'm a quitter. It's just that I used all the easy days and I got too lazy to do the hard ones, and I haven't been going to bed early enough anyways, and at the end of the day, I just quit. Hate me if you must. Haterz going to hate. But really, what would Jesus do? And quitting doesn't have to be bad. Quitting smoking is really good. Quitting being a terrorist is great. I quit to give myself an extra 30 minutes of sleep... Healthy choice!

Anyways, this is what I've really wanted to blog about for the past week:

I didn't see the HP premier like everyone and their mother, and I'll just save the rest of that issue for another post, but I did babysit for two couples that went to the midnight show. They left me four kids combined; only one of them was fast asleep when I got there. Two of them were running in circles screaming "Poopies and farts!" The last one was sitting in his bed crying. I decided to let the swirling vortexes of 4-and 6-year-old-boy storm on and turned my attention to the damp 3-year-old, thus choosing to make one of the most influential friendships of this summer.

This boy was in a bed covered in a classy madras bedcover and--if you were looking closely--Star Wars sheets. I'm not talking about the Star Wars cartoon thing that kids think is Star Wars. Nor am I talking about SW Episode I, II, and III (because I don't count those as Star Wars). His sheets had the faces of Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford sprinkled over them, along with various droids and wookies and yellow-block STAR WARS. I took this crying lump of precious into my lap and we started a conversation that went mostly like this:

"Dude, do you like Star Wars?"

"sob Y-y-yes."

"Who is your favorite person in Star Wars?"

"I-I-I don't kn-kn-know... sob But probably Darfader*." (Darth Vader in 3-year-old)

"What?! He's a bad guy."

To this, he shrugged, as if to say: Does Luke Skywalker kill people every time he raises his fist? Does Han Solo have the power to destroy planets?"

"So what's your favorite episode?"

"Empire Strikes Back. I-I like that one."

"No way! That is my favorite one too!" (I decided it was my favorite one when I was six, because the title is purple, compared to the blue of A New Hope and maroon of Return of the Jedi)

He had stopped crying for a minute and I didn't want to ruin the kindling of our best friendship, so I whipped out my secret weapon:

"Well... I have that one with me. Do you want to watch it?"

At that, he sat up, and looked into my eyes, and I just felt like I had said the right thing. There's this bond that Star Warsians share... I'd like to think that it was similar to the bond of a Jedi Master and his padawan. At any rate, I had never felt the force so strong in one so young, and I wasn't about to waste this opportunity to watch the Empire strike back.

If you're still wondering why I had Star Wars with me, you don't know me at all.

So we got out the movie, and the other two boys wanted to watch it too, but when they found out that it wasn't the cartoon they were both sorely disappointed. They went to bed about ten minutes in.

Probably one of the best parts of that whole movie was close to the beginning, when Luke gets attacked by the wompa. My amigo turned to me and said, "Um, um, look out, here comes the 'bomnible snowman!" The little version of me that lives in my head and jumps up and down when I get excited started jumping up and down and saying, "HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I CALLED WOMPAS TOO?????" And then, a few scenes later, when Luke is hanging by his feet to the ceiling of the lair of the wompa, amigo asked, "So, um, howd' Luke get up dere? Howd the 'bomnible snowman do dat?"

(me in my head) "I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW THAT!!!!!!!"

And then when Han's tauntaun dies, "Why is Han still alive if dat ting jus dies?"

"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And then, when he started to fall asleep as the Falcon landed in cloud kingdom, I decided that I could do the whole kids thing if my kids loved Star Wars as much as I did. As much as amigo did. I also felt really old. It doesn't feel like it's been more than a decade since I was asking the same questions he was, but it has been very long ago... In a galaxy far, far away.

May the force be with me. Always.