Go See a Star War

When I was twelve, I rented Star Wars on VHS from the public library. It wasn't called Episode IV then, and I had never heard the words "A New Hope" like that before. But I remember seeing commercials for the 1995 remastered editions, and I wanted to check it out.

In retrospect, I think the most familiarity I had with Star Wars was from Muppet Babies. If you've never watched Muppet Babies, it's an animated take on the bit from The Muppets Take Manhattan when all the Muppets are shown as babies growing up in the same nursery. They go on imaginative adventures, and because it was a Jim Henson-George Lucas-Steven Spielberg creation, they tended to use movie clips from Lucasfilm properties. This is probably why the show has never been on DVD. My point though is that watching Star Wars for the first time contained an element of recognition, thanks to the Muppet Babies. I remember this most strongly the first time that the Millennium Falcon is on screen, thinking "oh, that's what that is." The only justification for this remembrance I think are the clips used in the Muppet Babies.

That sense of recognition pervaded my first time watching the movies, at least Star Wars. I somehow knew Darth Vader, and lightsabers, and Princess Leia's hairstyle without ever having seen the movies. I think this speaks to George Lucas' great collection of cultural detritus into one distilled version of Joseph Campbell's monomyth. From the start though, I was hooked.

Star Wars turned me into a nerd. I'd seen the odd episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I was dimly aware of things like Dungeons and Dragons. My interest in video games goes back to about 1987, when my dad and I went to Sears(!) to buy an NES. However, I'd never encountered anything like Star Wars before. This was an entire universe that I immediately had to know more about. I was already drawing connections to other stories using Star Wars as a frame. My friend was heavily into playing Final Fantasy VI on the Super NES, and as he described the story, I remember fitting it into a Star Wars allegory in my head already.

I watched the next two movies on an old VHS tape recorded from television that my dad made, and was transfixed. The reveal that Darth Vader was Luke's father was information I picked up somewhere, but Yoda's announcement that "there is another" hit me hard. When I found out it was Leia, I was genuinely surprised.

This universe was where I wanted to be. I read technical manuals, novels, skipped studying for midterm exams because I was playing X-Wing on our 486 PC. It was the first time that an entire fantasy universe really hit me, and I could not consume enough Star Wars.

Over time, I'd show similar interest in Star Trek, and later Lord of the Rings, but Lucas was my gateway drug into world building and modern mythology. I remember having a countdown on my digital watch to Episode I, and having an embarrassing amount of giant plastic cups from Taco Bell. Star Wars got me interested in subcultures, and even though it's a more complicated love than it used to be, I'll still be in the theater on Thursday night for Episode VII.

November Madness

So it's been a while since I've updated, not because of a lack of things happening but a deluge. Somehow, events always seem to pile up in November at school, although I'm not sure why that would be. In a three week period, I've been in charge of Haunted Ghost Tours on Halloween night, our annual fall formal dance, the Induction Ceremony for our chapter of the National Honor Society, endured Parent-Teacher Conference night, taken a group of students to Louisville to hear Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) speak, taken 32 students on a three-day overnight mock state government simulation, and somehow kept up teaching in my spare time. Not that I don't enjoy those activities, but the fact that they all cluster together to form the Voltron of Scheduling makes November hard.

Couple these professional problems with the issue of Raptor-Son's chronic ear infections. That's not really accurate; he hasn't had a series of them, just one continuous ear infection since September. He never really seemed to mind, except when you laid him on his back. Other than that, there wasn't really an indication there was anything wrong. He never lost his appetite, his sleep schedule was not noticeably changed, and he only rarely pulled on his ears. But every time we took him to the doctor, his ears were still infected. We went through four rounds of antibiotics: amoxicillin, augmentin, and one more oral antibiotic. After that was a series of three injections given over the course of a week, and nothing seemed to work. It was actually really eerie, like a glimpse into the past without any antibiotics, or more likely the future when all diseases have become resistant to the antibiotics in use.  Given that no new commercial antibiotics have been developed in the last thirty years, the next few decades could be devastating.

For us anyway, finally the doctors recommended tubes for his ears. These tiny tubes were inserted into his ear cavity, and all the section to drain properly. In 95% of kids, this eliminates ear infections because it prevents fluid buildup. It's a very minor surgery that for us only took a literal 13 minutes between dropping him off at the anesthesiologist and picking him up again in recovery. He was pretty groggy, but within ten minutes was his normal bouncy self.  He didn't nap the rest of that day, but that's not terribly out of the ordinary.

So that's been our Novemeber: busy at school, busy at home. Thanksgiving was great, we took him on the Cincinnati Turkey Trot 10k, where he rode on Raptor-Mom's back the whole time. He ate a lot at his grandmother's house, then he ate a lot at his other grandmother's house, then we took him home and he passed out. He slept for a while, woke up, fussed, barfed, pooped, and then passed out again. All told, he probably had the most American Thanksgiving ever.