To celebrate Star Wars 30th anniversay, Yes But No But Yes has a great round-up of bloggers' first time watching a Star Wars movie.
It's an interesting exercise, but being born in 1979, I don't know that I can name the first time I saw it. In my youth, Luke Skywalker's rite of passage from desert planet hick to magical galactic warrior was a ubiquitous mythology. I'm not sure I ever had a first time seeing Star Wars: being an 80s kid, I likely absorbed the mythos through my mother's uterine walls.
I do remember my first Star Wars memory, though. As a three year old toddler, I went to the Park Street Day Care in Boston, where I was the only blond haired boy in the class. Coupled with the aggressive, alpha-male tendencies I exhibited as a rambunctious tot (which mysteriously faded to a dorksome meekness in my bumbling, pimply, sexually-frustrated teen years), this meant that I was always allowed to be Luke Skywalker when we played Star Wars.
It also meant that I was allowed to dictate the other kids' roles. My best friend Randy, the only black kid in our class, was assigned to be Lando Calrissian: exhibiting a precocious ability for racial typecasting, I denied his request to be Han Solo on the grounds that Han was still frozen in carbonite. This was in-keeping with what we knew at the time: it was 1982, and Return of the Jedi wouldn't be out until next year.
Likewise, there was nothing incestuous at the time about Princess Leia being portrayed by my adorable preschool girlfriend (not the last girl I would love passionately for many months only to soon forget her name, thought doubtlessly the first). It was well-known at the time that Princess Leia was Luke's girlfriend, not his sister; even the early Marvel Star Wars comics and novels made the assumption.
Finally, there was a rather ugly girl in our class, who I recall as being prone to tantrums. She had shaggy, unkempt brown hair and an upturned nose; she also had a desperate crush on me, and always asked to be Princess Leia. Inevitably, I made her play Chewbacca.
As for Darth Vader. the role was always played by the meanest teacher in our class... albeit, quite without his knowledge. I've always wondered what he made of the crowd of small, hyperactive children who would suddenly converge upon him, thwacking him with rolled-up magazines and making lightsaber noises with their sticky mouths.
The First Time I Saw Star Wars [Yes But No But Yes]
