A New Hope

Ello, what’s shaking peeps?

So a rather beautiful thing happened tonight in my normally not worthy to blog about life. Now don't get too excited, its not like a new Londis opened or anything, that was last week but this is rather lovely.

I was strolling around my local Xtravision (the main video store chain in Ireland for any out of towners) and I was doing my normal thing of weighing up should I rent this movie again and slightly wishing I had a girl to rent the many romcoms that I not so secretly really want to watch.

At this point I seen a very small boy run in the door of said video hangout followed by his father, a very young man himself who could not have been more than a couple of years older than me. The father rather naturally joined me looking at the new releases while his son went exploring and then bang, the tsunami of adorable hit. The wee boy runs up to his father clutching a DVD shouting 'Star Wars! Star Wars' and sure enough the lad was holding a copy of Return of the Jedi. The father seemed quite shocked by this having to ask a couple of times 'You want to watch Star Wars yeah?' but did not mess around, he ran up the counter before the child had to chance to find 'Max 10' on DVD (I think that’s what the kids are into these days..).

Though what made this nearly bring a tear to my eye? For the main part it was the look on the fathers face as knew he was about to partake in what surely must be the main reason to have kids, to show them a Star Wars movie for the first time. Obviously there are other reasons such as carrying on the human race and the chance to a raise a child that uses the term 'Cunt Muscle' as a term of endearment, but showing Star Wars to your kids must rank among them. Now a vital thing to remember when first showing a Star Wars movie to your kid is that order is not important. That may seem like crazy talk and I'm sure a number of you are right now digging through your toilets to find some excrement just to throw at me, but claim down shit hands. The reason why it isn't vital to show them in order is because its all about the feeling of the Star Wars universe.

It doesn't matter if your young tiny brain first sees Han saving Luke in the Death Star Trench Run or Han saying 'I know' in Empire, all that matters is that you seen Han be the coolest guy in the entire universe.

I for example seen Empire first on a recorded BetaMax tape brought over by my older cousin and I still remember like it was yesterday, including playing out my favourite parts with Gi Joe toys right after.

So I can only hope that in five, ten or twenty years time my own child will ask 'Daddy, why do you have toys in your bedroom' and I will get a chance to say 'That’s because of Star Wars shit covered porta-potty at Electric Picnic' ..Yes I am going to go down the Posh Spice route and name the child where it was conceived, well that or Chewie.