Originally published August 23rd, 2012

Long before my son was born I had a plan for sharing Star Wars with him. Before I had met his mother (aka The Love of My Life), I had a vision of how I would share the journey through that universe far, far away.

I pictured how much fun it would be to see my child marvel at the size of the Death Star. How shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, he would be when they found out that Darth Vader is really Luke’s father. I was looking forward to the apprehension in his eyes during the first bass-heavy footfalls of the approaching AT-AT walkers.

In short, I wanted him to experience Star Wars the way I had.  Maybe even to grow to resent George Lucas the way that I do.

This whole plan was ruined in pre-school, when some other parents deemed the Star Wars universe appropriate for their then-four-year old son. He inevitably came to school and told my son all about the amazing story he’d been turned-on to. So much for my plan.

In one short afternoon my son went from 0 – 60, learning everything about the Death Star, the death of Obi Wan, Luke’s lineage and more. It would be easy to blame all of this on the other boy, or his parents; or the baby sitter who eventually told him the whole trilogy, shot-by-shot. But the truth is unless I was willing to show my son Star Wars at age 3 (I was not), or lock him away in a cave until age 7 (an inviting but unrealistic plan) he was going to learn all about it.

I wrestled with that long and hard, trying to come to grips with the fact that my Star Wars is not my son’s Star Wars. That out there, somewhere in the future, is a sci-fi or fantasy epic that will resonate so deeply with him he will want to share it with his kids. Provided he still wants kids after seeing what a snot-nosed punk Luke turns out to be.