Search Your Feelings, You Know It To Be True

Costume Shop, Geeks Rule, Kentucky, USA | Right | October 30, 2015

(It is October of 1999. I am in the local fabric store with some friends, getting costuming stuff. We run across a woman buying up materials to make an Anakin Skywalker costume for her nine-year-old son who’s with her. He really, really likes “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace”; it is his favorite movie, and he has come to be a huge fan of “Star Wars”.)

Boy: “I’ve watched the original trilogy of films every week, and I’ve seen Episode I in theaters a dozen times and can’t wait for it to come out on tape!”

Mom: “I hope my boy grows up to be just like Anakin!”

(She then goes on to talk about what a great role model Anakin is for young boys and how she encourages her boy to be like Anakin… Cue the awkward pause and cringe by me and my friends.)

Me: “Uh, do you know that Anakin Skywalker grows up to be Darth Vader?”

Mom: “Don’t be crazy. You’re making that up. There’s no way sweet little Anakin could ever become evil like that. Besides, he doesn’t grow up to be Vader. They have different names, after all.”

Me: “These are prequels. They are set decades before the original films, right? Okay, the hero of the original films was Luke Skywalker, right? Okay, remember the ‘No, I am your father’ part that Vader says?”

(That is when it clicked for her. She’d never put it together. She got a look of abject horror on her face when she realized it was true. She grabbed her boy by the hand, dragging him out of the store, saying he was going to be something else for Halloween, he was not allowed to ever watch “Star Wars” ever again, and she was getting rid of all his “Star Wars” stuff because it was filled with such bad role models for children.)

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