It's Not Your Fault Angela, It's In Their Blood - Episode IV: New Hopes

Is there a better opening phrase ever?  I mean, seriously, every time I see that blue writing on the black screen I get chills.  It's very cool.

Oh, I guess I should stop things for a second in case you haven't figured it out yet, but this is Bob, not Angela today.  Many moons ago we both used to post here, but pretty much since the boys came home from the hospital, it's been exclusively Angela.

So, I apologize to those of you who prefer to hear from her, but I felt this post had to be done by me just so the facts are straight as she is a bit "uneducated" in the ways of the Force.

Basically the main difference in blogs from  Angela vs ones I do, mine have tons of set up and tend to be a lot more wordy and not written near as well.  So, buckle up because now I get to show you what I mean.

A month or so ago Angela asked me, "This whole Star Wars thing will pass, right?  Just like Yo Gabba Gabba and Sid the Science Kid?"  I looked at her and smiled and said, "I'm almost 42 and it has yet to pass".

She said, "Oh, God."

Star Wars entered my life in the spring of 1977, I was 6 years old.  My dad brought home the Story of Star Wars LP, and I had that thing memorized by the time they finally got off their rears and took us to see it at the drive in.  I was reciting the dialog back to my parents and I had never seen the flick.  I remember even though I knew the story thinking, wow, so that's what a flying ship looks like?

Next came collecting the action figures and trading cards and this kid was hooked.  I spent a lot of quality time with my action figures growing up.  Don't ask about what Princess Leia did behind the closed door of my room.  Let's just say, she didn't discriminate and she got around.  Wookies, Droids, whatever it was I seemed to have at the ready.

When the Prequels were released starting in 1999, I was coming up on 30 years old, but I was still silly excited.  I even went and bought the first round of action figures for the Phantom Menace with my buddy Marc the Cop.   They were never taken out of the packaging until recently.  They've become great incentives for the boys when they poop on the potty.  Just yesterday, we were able to give one to James for the first time, he chose Jar Jar Binks as Ryan and Michael had already claimed, Mace Windu, Young Boy Annakin, Darth Maul and Jango Fett.

 As the boys turned 2 and started watching movies a little more, I'd get frustrated watching the same 4 movies over and over and over again.  So, I decided it was time to introduce them to a little Star Wars, but I didn't think they'd sit through the films as they hadn't watched any live action stuff at that point.  I asked for The Clone Wars cartoon movie for Christmas but had never seen it.  Uncle Joseph got it for us and we sat down to watch not long after.

I wasn't a big fan, but the boys sure did like it.  It was a bit violent, ok, a lot violent.  Angela is a lot more sensitive to that than I am, but I was the one who said, I'm not sure this is good for the boys.  They did like to watch it though, so we decided to start introducing them to the movies.  We introduced about 1 a month starting with the Original 3 and then moving to the prequels.

Ryan is the most vocal of the crew as he works really hard to know who everybody is as we are constantly doing pop quizzes.  Ryan - "Whose that?"  Daddy "I don't know, you tell me".  Ryan "Uhm, Chewbacca!" he says with a huge smile.


James and Michael don't talk near as much about Star Wars as Ryan does but they sure do pay attention.  Michael gets scared a bit from time to time, but there isn't too much that makes James happier than "Stormtroopers, Daddy!"

Angela would prefer the boys watch other things than Star Wars, but I'm ok with it because currently we have 5 movies in the rotation, to me, that's a whole lot better than Finding Nemo for the 442nd time this week.  Although I do have to admit, I really have a hard time with Phantom Menace, but the boys dig the tar out the Pod race scene and Darth Maul, they get really excited.  The first hour of Attack of the Clones is near excruciating as well, but the film ends well and it has Jango Fett in it, whom they all love.

About three months ago I sent something I found on the web to Angela, it was a complete joke.  I send her stuff all the time saying, we should go to that.  I never once expect her to say, yeah, we should go.  She completely surprised me when looking at the information on Star Wars Celebration VI in Orlando she said, we should go, the boys will enjoy that.

I kept saying, no, they are too young.

As recently as 5 days ago I told her, we aren't going, we can't afford it and the boys are too young.  Then she bought the tickets and the next thing I knew we were telling the boys about it and they started to get excited.

At that point I got in the mood and started searching the web when the show opened on Thursday to get an idea of what we had coming our way.  It looked like we'd have lots of photo opportunities and that Angela would probably have a coronary.

She gets very uptight in public as the boys sometimes aren't being the best rule followers.  I tend to give them a little more rope than she does and that leads to some tense moments in front of strangers from time to time.  I was a bit nervous about how she'd do in what looked like would be a pretty large crowd.

I woke everyone up at 6:30 AM on Saturday, had everybody in the car at 7:30 and off to Orlando we went.  Things didn't start well as Ryan was upset from the get go.  About 5 minutes from the house I thought to myself, maybe we should turn around because this could be miserable.

Angela eventually got him to calm down, and shortly after 10, we arrived in the parking lot at the Convention Center.  The boys were excited and as we rode the parking lot shuttle, we'd see the occasional Boba Fett walk by and they'd get really wound up.  James was more excited by the passing cars and the fact that he wasn't strapped in on a moving vehicle.  He really wanted to stand up and go "whoa, whoa, whoa" as the bus moved down the street.


It took us a bit to walk from the bus to where the tickets were as we made a wrong turn or 4 and the boys were getting a bit anxious.    At that point we found this gathering of Fett's and something I didn't anticipate happening happened:  Ryan got scared.  My biggest Star Wars fan, the guy who is always talking about Boba and Jango Fett.  The kid who pops Michael in the head every time he misidentifies a Fett was surrounded by them, and he totally froze up.

I'm not exactly sure what Fett's these were and I'm going to say that's why Ryan wouldn't go near them.  Apparently we don't watch enough Clone Wars or something, and he just didn't want to recognize a Fett that wasn't Boba or Jango.

The guys were really nice and for some reason I was surprised when they spoke.  They had headsets on and the sound was really good, perhaps they had a Bose speaker system hidden in that helmet, I'm not sure.  One of them gave James a blaster to start and he was in heaven.

 This was the closest we were able to get Ryan to them, he wouldn't budge any closer.

James sure looks happy though, don't he?

Ryan seems very confused by the Pink R2 unit but at least he approached it.

At this point of the story I believe dear reader you are saying to yourself, they aren't even in the convention yet?  'Tis true, we are not, so why don't we stop here for today and in the next day or so I'll come back with another part of the story.