Jedi Rob

I grew up with the original trilogy. I still vividly remember going to Burger King to collect stickers for the Empire Strikes Back book. You had to get four squares to form a picture of the movie - the asteroid escape, the Imperial walker attack, etc. I of course also had the Star Wars figures and am very thankful that parents held on to them for all these years.

I am now a proud father of the best little boy in the world (of course I am biased). I feel like I am having a second childhood - especially when it comes to Star Wars. This time last year (July 2007) I bought a Star Wars toy for the first time since the early 1980s. It was a Tie Fighter, similar to the one I played with incessantly as a kid myself. A year later and my son still plays with it!

His favorite Star Wars character also proved to be one of his first words - Boba Fett. When he saw the iconic T-shaped helmet in one of my Star Wars magazines, he pointed to it and said, "Boh-bah, Boh-bah!" I was so amazed, especially since he was my favorite character too as a kid.

We were cleaning up his toys tonight and he came across my old Lando figure. Now we know how slick Lando is (or he thinks he is), but do you know how my son remembers him? He grabs his own throat and makes a face - imitating the scene where Chewbacca is choking Lando while he tries to say,"Han! There is still time to save Han!" While I'm not thrilled about him pretending to choke and had to correct him on that, I was laughing inside about the first thing he thinks of as the ladies man of Star Wars!

Update: 7/26/08
My son and I went to the Toys'R'Us midnight madness sale for the launch of the new Clone Wars product line. Fifteen members of the 501st were there and my little guy was both excited and nervous. There were clone troopers, stormtroopers, Boba & Jango Fett, Padme, a Jawa, and even a "lifesize" Chewbacca (he must have been on half-stilts). He was fascinated, but too scared to get close to him. He was content just waving to him.

However, this morning (*late* this morning) when he woke up, he asked to see, "Chihuahua Chewbacca". I guess he liked him after all!