Star Wars Day is May 4th-here’s how we’re going to celebrate

Every year on May 4this Star Wars Day.  Like some people need an excuse to watch any of the Star Wars movies or look at the comics.  Our kids are still a bit too young to watch Episode 4: A New Hope, or just Star Wars to the OG’s.  Next year we’ll celebrate by watching that, but in the meantime I’ll celebrate by showing our 4 and 2 year olds some of the original Star Wars stuff that I had when I was a kid.   When Star Wars first came out I was 9 years old, which is a great age to play when you’re a kid.   For me, I was too old and not really into action figures.  I was however, very much into (surprise) comic books and clothing.  I’ll zip through the comics later, for now let’s get the old school Force on our clothing.

The Star Wars shirt that I wore the most was a white sweatshirt with “May the Force be with you” on it. I remember the Christmas that I got that because I was so excited to get it that I was able to wear it to church that day.  If you can’t bribe a child to go to church with doughnuts a Star Wars shirt is a close second.  Unfortunately because it was white, it didn’t make it through the years.

Which is quite remarkable that this iron on shirt I wore is still here and reasonable clean.  I freaked out when I found it, showed it to my wife who promptly said that our son wouldn’t be wearing it.  To her credit, it does have a couple stains, but-it’s original.  The color has faded, but if I could find a photo of me circa 1977 I’m confident that I’d be wearing it.

I showed the shirt to our oldest son.

“What’s that”?

“It’s a cool shirt from when I was a kid”

“It’s dirty”

I think that my wife got to him before I could explain to him just how cool it really is. I don’t remember these Star Wars shoes from Clarke, but I must have worn them because they certainly show signs of enjoyment.  I would also like to pat my 9 year old self on the back for saving the box that they came in.  The box is cooler than the shoes aren’t they? One groovy thing about the Star Wars shoes is the imprint that’s on the bottom of them.  That way people can simply follow your footprints in order to know that you’re a fashion Jedi Master. Holding up my pants was this classic. I wish that the bronze belt would’ve been the thick, 70’s trucker style instead of a simple hook, but the belt itself is still pretty cool. My metal Star Wars lunchbox accompanied me every day to Joyner Elementary.  We lived close enough to the school for me to be able to bike as it was just over a mile away through the back streets.  That is, unless I took the route through the woods just past the burned out vacant house, which was shorter and downhill, but much spookier. Our youngest son has started celebrating Star Wars Day early.  He carries the metal lunch box around the house, looking at all of the sides and trying to figure out how to open it.  One thing I like about the original Star Wars merchandise is how normal all of the characters looked.

Luke is a normal sized man, Leia is dressed appropriately (except for that whole Slave Leia thing, but even that was normal for the setting and not too out of place, but this is a different topic….) and Han is bigger, but not overly muscular.  In other words, nobody looked like freaks except for the freaky aliens, who were supposed to look that way.  Even by Return of the Jedi the character toys were already bigger, more muscular and didn’t look so innocent or friendly.

Star Wars Day on May 4^th is always innocent and will become the standards that dad will write about in 40 years.  It’s all good fun that can bring families together.  Have you introduced the Force to your kids yet?  If so, we’d love to hear any stories about how you did it and the way that they responded.