Star Wars, or How I Became a Real American.

Written By Gretchen Harwell

I told one of the vets at work today that I was going to watch Star Wars for the first time tonight, and he went from mild surprise to shock in about five seconds. I guess it seems so strange because most people my age, older, and younger feel like this movie and everything that surrounds it is so ingrained in our culture that people are born having seen it; like we must all have some sort of inherited cellular memory for it. We talked about it a little and I started to think back to see if I could remember my friends talking about it, or if any of them were Star Wars nerds/collectors, and I only came up with this story. When I was in youth orchestra, I had a friend named Anna who was smart, cool, funny, CULTURED (she saw movies!), and all around awesome. One year for my birthday, Anna gave me a Critter Catcher/Bug Habitat, complete with a worm and a couple of bugs she had named "Chewbacca and The Babies." I had no idea who or what Chewbacca was. I remember asking someone and they looked at me like I was an alien when they realized I was serious. Outside of that, my first real exposure to the Star Wars movies probably came in college, when I started dating a film student and hanging out with his friends. I married him, and he's such a good guy he never looked down on me because I hadn't seen it.



I am 31 years old and have never seen this thing that my 7 year old nephew and 5 year old niece quote daily. My 2 year old nephew sings the Imperial March and wants to play light sabers all day long. I watched it tonight, and now I feel like a real American. Finally.

So, did I like it? I guess I did, yes. I sat there watching it thinking "oh, that's where that comes from," the entire time. I mean, it's good, right? Sure. Yes. It is. I did enjoy it. I don't mind the fact that I already knew most of what would happen in the movie. It's not exactly easy to avoid references to Star Wars. I had a pet worm named Chewbacca for an entire afternoon, for crying out loud. It's a fun movie, but here's my thing: I think it's better when you saw it the first time around as a kid. This obviously isn't the fault of the movie, but rather the fault of my parents. I had been told that it's not the best of the three and I knew not to expect it to be some cinematic masterpiece, so it's not that I feel let down by it, but I just feel nonplussed by it. I really can't even pin down anything about this movie that I didn't like, there was just nothing I particularly loved about it. Is that bad of me? Am I still an American? Yes. I'm not going to make it my religion, but I will finally understand what my nephew means when he talks about X-Wings. If for no other reason, I like it because now I feel like I know at least part of what I missed out on.