Well, there's no turning back now. A generation's last-ditch effort at childhood is reaching its final stage. Before were just the smells, the quick forbidden sights - an odd creature here, a new Jedi there - a brief taste before it was stripped away and replaced with the usual, boring entree.
We've led our adult lives as best we could, waiting. We saw junior high, high school and college graduation come and go. We've searched hard and long for that perfect job, that career that would put and keep us on the right track, immune to the legal counsel of Mom & Dad, Inc.
We've met and maybe married that special someone, alleviating, God forbid, dating in our thirties. We've started a family, signed our soul to a mortgage and, yes, increased our 401(k)s each year like good little boys and girls. We've even gained a little weight, lost a little hair. It's okay, we've earned it.
We've done all this, 16 long years, with one month in sight.
One month where age and inhibitions cease to exist. A month where a junior executive can walk the halls with an extended lightsaber, telling his boss: "Don't worry about that presentation, The Force will be us. Always." A month where a crossing guard can sit and wait for children in an inflatable Darth Maul lounge chair. A month where you can get up from your desk, sweep away your files, walk out your office door and tell your assistant: "I'm going to lunch - Yoda is is the featured cup at Tacoville."
Yes, it's May 1999. One quick indulgence before the new millennium. It the words of that other, lesser-known Prince song: We want to party like it's 1983.
No one of authority will care. They'll just chalk it up as Y2K hysteria, something to let off a little steam before the world ends. A genius that George Lucas, couldn't have time it better.
Oh, what a joy standing in front of Toys R Us that early May eve, planning our strategy for getting the young Obi-Wan figure, knowing the right time to push the eight-year-old with the cherub face to the floor and say: "Don't worry, kid, here's a Queen Amidala, she's just as good." No looks of disgust here. They know who we are. We've earned it.
And then the magic week. In seven days it's here. There's great anticipation but awful dread as well. Soon it will be over. The next time it comes around we'll have even less hair, wider handles. We savor the the moment the best we can.
We recall that cloudy Wednesday morning a few weeks back when we headed to our favorite theater for advance tickets. The old and the young, Armani mixed with flannel. All of us there, the fraternal brotherhood.
Granted the young remember only video, but this film will be their initiation. We share fond memories of a farmboy with a grand, unforeseeable future, a smuggler confined to Carbonite. We scoff at such travesties at Ewoks and a brother and sister locking lips.
We remember holding the world in our hands after each repeated viewing, a world of undying imagination. As the line finally moves and each brother grabs his or her ticket, we all turn seven or eight years old again - shoelaces untied, caps flipped backwards, our wholes lives in front of us.
We will savor this, this time, this month of May, yearning for galaxies far, far away.
Published in the Orange County Register May 18, 1999
