Star Wars Memories

In the 1976/77 school year I was a newly minted high school student. Full to bulging with baby boomers kids the school was huge. The previous spring and summer had been all about the Bicentenial. The temporary classrooms behind the school were painted in patriotic designs of pink, beige and baby blue (don't ask), and there were a lot of them.

I was a band rat. And in a school that huge did what all good band rats did, I hung out in the band room at lunch time. It was far less crowded and uncivil than the cafeteria and full of people I knew (an important consideration in a school with enrollment over 3000). Among the band rats was a subset of full on geeks. One day these guys came in just giddy from their latest Star Trek club meeting. Seems they had a guest speaker from a movie studio who showed them the holy grail of coming attractions. For days we ridiculed this sudden influx of weird talk of spaceships and "wookies". They blathered on and on.

But then it happened. At the Uptown theatre a line ran around the block for that strange geeky movie. It was "Star Wars". One of the guys rode the line and went to the local opening. His buddies shortly afterward. It was an amazing thing watching this movie shift from geek-bait to blockbuster. I saw it somewhat later. On an out of town excursion with the parents as I recall. Funny thing I remember very little about the actual movie viewing of the first one. I just remember everything else around it.

Now the circle will close. Despite a lifetime of expectations for 3 trilogies, Lucas says there were always only 2. This is it, the end of the beginning. The husband is getting excited. He has his tickets for tomorrow (he's not much of a midnight guy). I have no plans for when yet, but I'll see it. I have to because in some ways I've been waiting my entire adult life for it.

I'll always love the original best of all. It stood on it's own. It was new and exciting and totally unexpected. I'll always appreciate Empire as the best of the set. I can even remember where I sat in the theatre that's now a Gold's gym after watching it with my sis. Return has a special place for me too. For all it's failings (and ewoks) I remember distinctly how transported I was. It was the circumstances of my life at the time, but when I left the theatre I literally couldn't remember where I was for the first minute or so. This trilogy has been far less compelling for me. I've seen them all, though, it's almost expected.

Two weekends ago the husband took the boy down to the videodrome and showed him the original. He liked the movie he kept calling Episode 4, but to me it is and will always be just plain Star Wars.