It was the springtime of 1980, and the future was bearing down on me like a runaway bantha.

I was ten, the school year was winding down, and very soon the fifth grade would be behind me. So would elementary school. Come fall, I’d be spending my days in that great, fog-shrouded unknown called middle school. I’d been hearing rumors about what I could expect when I got there, and frankly I wasn’t looking forward to it. No one could tell me the point of changing classrooms and teachers multiple times during the day. There were stories about massive amounts of homework. Some said they held activities where they made you dance with girls. (I was never one of those stereotypical boys who disliked girls on principle, but the thought of dancing filled me with terror.) Then there was the transportation issue. My elementary school was within a stone’s-throw of my house, and I’d always walked to and from home; now I’d have to take the bus, one of those big, rattling, smelly yellow things that you always had to worry about missing. And what was this nonsense about having to take a shower… with other boys… at school? Revolting!

Thankfully, though, I had things to distract me from my middle-school anxieties. There was a whole three months of summer vacation coming up, and with them was the promise of all the bike-riding, Slurpee-swilling, and treehouse comic-book reading I could stand. My parents were planning to take me and my cousin Stacey on a camping trip to the Grand Canyon as soon as school was over. And, oh yeah, there was a new Star Wars movie about to premiere.

I could hardly wait.

I didn’t know much about this new film, only what had been revealed in a “special sneak preview” that had played with the re-release of the first Star Wars the previous summer. I could confirm that the new film took place somewhere cold because there was snow and Han Solo was wearing a coat in the preview, and I was also absolutely certain that The Empire Strikes Back wasn’t going to be anything like the would-be sequel novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, a debate that still raged among my friends even at that late date. But everything else about the movie was a mystery to me.

It hadn’t been easy to keep it all a secret. The comic book adaptation was out by then, and the novelization, too. There were copies of them already in my house, and I ached to sit down and lose myself in their pages, to find out everything that was going to happen to my heroes next. But I had so far resisted the temptation, admittedly with a lot of help from my mom. She was keeping the books for me in her dresser, where I couldn’t get to them. She’d sat down when she had first bought them for me and explained how knowing what was going to happen in a movie before I ever set foot in the theater could affect my reactions. Reading those books, she said, could “ruin” the movie experience for me. I thought I understood, and agreed that it would be best to go into the theater fresh, or “unspoiled,” as modern-day fanboys say.

Unfortunately, not all of my schoolmates understood the corrosive effect of what we now call “spoilers,” i.e., plot details that become public before the movie opens. There was one kid a year or two younger than myself who had heard something about Empire, something shocking and mind-blowing, something that would completely change everything. And he desperately wanted me to know about it, too.

This kid, who I’ll call Bob so as to spare him any embarrassment in case he’s reading, came running up to me one day shortly before school ended for the summer and said he had to tell me something. I had a hunch of what it was about, so I said, “No way. I don’t to ruin the movie for myself.” Bob insisted that it was really important, and again I told him no.

He kept pressing the issue, though. He was terribly excited, practically jumping up and down with the eagerness to unburden himself, and it was obvious he was going to just blurt it out if I didn’t get away from him. I couldn’t let weeks of monastic self-denial go down the garbage chute, so I started walking. But Bob followed me, trying to convince me I needed to hear this. I told him I didn’t want to hear it and started walking faster. I headed for the stairs, thinking I could maybe get down them and out the front door before he could spill the beans.

The main staircase of my old elementary school was a wonderful thing, a broad, double flight of steps with a wooden bannister faded and worn smooth from years of kids sliding down it. Between the two flights was a spacious landing and a huge, arched window that overlooked the school’s front lawn. The window was segmented into several semi-circular rows of curved panes. It reminded me of the Millennium Falcon‘s cockpit canopy. I suppose it is appropriate, then, that this was the spot where Bob could no longer hold his tongue.

I was halfway down the stairs, on the landing beside the window. I glanced up to see if he was following me. He was still standing on the top floor, his hands on the railing that looked down into the stairwell. We made eye contact and he sort of lunged toward me, as if he were going to vault over the railing and drop down beside me. Instead, he shouted out the words I’d been trying so desperately not to hear:

“Darth Vader is Luke’s father!”

A lot of time has passed since that day, and my memory has no doubt been embellished by imagination. But as I recall, my reaction to this news wasn’t much different than Luke Skywalker’s. Except I had no bottomless shaft to leap into, only one measly flight of stairs.

Bob, perhaps seeing that he’d mortally wounded me and it would be best to leave me alone, or maybe having simply fulfilled his evil mission, turned and strode away without another word.

A few days later, I saw The Empire Strikes Back for the first time.

It was everything I’d been hoping for, an exciting return to the galaxy far, far way, filled with new environments, new creatures, and new spectacles unlike anything I’d seen on a movie screen before. I’d convinced myself that Bob was full of crap, that he’d heard a false rumor like all those people who believed that Splinter of the Mind’s Eye was going to be the next SW movie. Vader couldn’t be Luke’s father. It was a silly thought; they didn’t even share the same last name. And who knew what was under that mask? Vader probably wasn’t even a human being, I thought…

Except, as everybody knows, Bob was right. I was literally on the edge of my seat when the climactic scene approached. Luke was defeated, his weapon gone and his hand with it. Vader was going to kill him. But then the icon of ultimate evil lowered his weapon and said… exactly what Bob had said that afternoon at school.

That’s when I fully understood what my mother had been trying to tell me about the concept we now call spoilers. I wanted to cry because this big, earth-shattering revelation, this thing that should’ve hit me like a blow to the stomach, wasn’t a surprise at all. It was just another line of dialogue. I still loved the movie, but I could only try to imagine what it could’ve been if I hadn’t known.

I wanted to find Bob that day and punch him in the stomach. But I never did. Because the sad truth is, he thought he was doing me a favor.

Some favor.