A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away....

(I have my September outfit but I don't have pics yet. It's not terribly exciting...the only sewing I did was hemming a pair of pants.  So while I wait for the opportunity to get pictures made, here's a story for you).

42 years ago Luke Skywalker was given a lightsaber and took off across the galaxy to fight the Empire for freedom and a bit of revenge.

There was an 18 year old girl in Indiana who happened to go watch his adventure late in July and was completely swept away by the story.  She wanted to grab a lightsaber  and go fight the Empire as well.

Nevermind that she was susceptible to motion sickness and threw up on airplanes.  Details.

She went back to see it again in less than a week.  Whoever heard of going to a movie theater to see the same movie TWICE!

Well, that movie played in some theaters for a solid year.  One was walking distance of the university she moved to about a month later, and that theater was a tired little place that charged a dollar.

One. Dollar.

By the time the one-year anniversary rolled around, she'd seen the movie on the big screen about a dozen times.

She could drop the needle anywhere on one of the two LP's in the soundtrack and tell you what was happening in the movie at that point.

She wrote fan fiction.  Never finished it, but she wrote it.

She had the bug but bad.

For the first movie.   The second and third movies...yeah, repeated viewings of those, but not quite as many as the first.

Years later, when the extended versions were released to theaters, she took her kids and felt a  little bummed that Han, Luke and Leia still looked the same.  She sure didn't.

A new trilogy came out...and she watched the first movie, confusingly called 'Episode 1' even though it was the 4th movie, once, and would climb on a soapbox and rail at the obvious plot manipulation.  She didn't even see movies five and six.   (Deletes small rant).

But she loved the Original Trilogy. And, while the third trilogy has its issues (don't get me started on the Bridge of Solo's Doom), the starquesting 18 year old geek has awoken.

And, now there's an actual place where that 18 year old finally has the chance to grab a lightsaber and hop on the Millennium Falcon.

She's still there,  deep in the recesses of the 60 year old lady who didn't take nearly enough pictures that day.

May the Force be with you.

:-D