A Pivotal Developmental Milestone

May 1977. I was about a year older then than Fiona is now. George Lucas releases a weird little space movie which goes on to be seen by everybody in the known universe over the next few months.

Except for me. My parents, no doubt cackling over the abuse they were visiting upon me, decided I was too young to see Star Wars. I proceeded to spend the next school year pretending to know what everybody was talking about when it came to Luke, Han, Leia, Vader and Obi-Wan. I experienced the phenomenon second-hand, which you couldn't help but do, what with the action figures, bed sheets, comic books and other assorted tie-ins, not to mention the fact that every single day at recess inevitably involved light saber battles as one scene or another got recreated near the jungle gym.

By the time I finally convinced my grandmother to take me to see the movie two years later, I already knew every beat, but I was still bitter at my parents for what they denied me. I made up for it by turning into a ridiculous film geek for about 15 years, seeing just about everything I could lay my hands on in some desperate effort to make up for that central childhood trauma.

And I swore I would never do the same thing to my kids.

Well, I promised I'd let my kids do a lot of things I never did like eat candy bars for dinner and never have a bedtime, and you know how most of those promises work out. But this afternoon, all I can say to my parents is... this is something we let Fiona do:

The good: she likes what she's seeing. She's actually gotten her hands on a Star Wars book for kids already, so some of this is familiar.

The bad: she keeps asking where Jar Jar Binks is. Sigh.