Stop Raping My Childhood

Saturday night has arrived and I am tearing out chunks of my hair and not just because the Dodgers lost to the Cardinals or because I have a neighbor who thinks it is cool to pile bags of trash outside her door so that she only has to walk the 100 feet to the dumpster once a week.

No, this time it is because I have read more posts about how to improve Star Wars and I am fighting mad.

Ok, I am not really fighting mad nor am I tearing chunks of hair out so let’s get to the meat of the matter.

1. Han shot first.
2. Darth Vader was the personification of evil.
3. You don’t have to dissect every movie to try to figure out if there is symbolism or a hidden message in them. Trust me, I am a freaking writer and sometimes I say the sky was blue because it is blue and not because I want you to get some other deeper meaning out of it.

Your Posts About Equality Make Me Scream

Let’s start this discussion with an acknowledgment that it is ok to disagree and that it is good to have differing opinions. Let’s add that I want my children to believe they can grow up to be whatever they want and to do whatever they want to do.

I love my kids equally but I don’t expect or need them to be the same because boys and girls are different. It is ok. They don’t have to have the same interests or play the same games.

The goal should always be to give them the same opportunity to succeed.

That being said if I read one more post about how Star Wars is sexist I am going to Force choke the writer and shove the typewriter and pretend light saber up and down.

Call that my awkward code for referencing a colonoscopy and endoscopy.

And for those who are literal allow me to confirm I don’t intend to do any of those things. I may tell you I think your theory is wrong and or ridiculous but there will be no violence.

The Drive-In 1977

I was eight years-old when Star Wars came out. My folks took us to a drive-in to see it.  I remember being amazed by it and wanting to kill my baby sisters for screaming through the entire movie.

You might wonder if time has colored my memories and I’ll grant that it is possible but I really don’t remember coming out of the movie thinking that girls were less capable because Princess Leia wasn’t a jedi.

I remember her fighting and being captured bur being captured by a Sith lord like Darth Vader wasn’t embarrassing because he was tough. That dude was bad. He was powerful and it didn’t matter whether you were a boy or a girl.

But what makes me truly insane is having this kind of discussion because the movie is and was about fun.

At 8 years-old I knew that the Force wasn’t real and that I was just pretending to be a Jedi.  My kids know that too and they recognized it when they saw the movies because I made sure they were old enough to understand certain things.

Boy Things/Girl Things

My daughter is not a fan of pink. I once mentioned this to another father and he congratulated me on raising an independent girl. I told him it had nothing to do with anything I had said.

She doesn’t like pink because she doesn’t like pink.

Sometimes I hear my kids talk about boy things and girl things and I have never been bothered by it because they don’t it in terms of limitations. It is an expression and understanding that there are differences between the sexes and it is ok with them and  their parents.

We don’t have to make ourselves crazy in trying to make everything the same because the same is different from equal opportunity and that is really what it is about.

Give them equal opportunities to succeed but understand that they don’t have to be the same to do that.

And to be clear, Han shot first.