So, it occurs to me that the Big Anniversary Entry I posted earlier this morning is somewhat vague about my own personal experiences with Star Wars in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and some folks who are just joining us may wonder why. Well, it’s because I’ve written about that subject before, of course:

I was seven years old in the summer of 1977, the prime age of susceptibility to a story featuring young, swashbuckling heroes, strange-looking creatures, and scary — but not too scary — villains. (See also Potter, Harry, Modern kids and.) I’m sure I must’ve seen a few movies on the big screen before then — I vaguely recall a couple of early-70s live-action Disney films about people in really bad polyester knits — but the first truly memorable film I saw in a theater…

 

Wait. Stop.

 

I’m not going to continue with that thought. My experience of seeing Star Wars for the first time couldn’t have been much different than a lot of other people’s. We were all kids, we’d never seen anything like it, we stood in lines that went around the block (literally, in my case — I saw the film at the long-lost Centre Theatre in Salt Lake; there was no lobby to speak of, and the only place to queue up was outside, on the street), big spectacle, big excitement, tiny little brains melting, lifelong obsessions forming, blah blah blah.

 

We were all there, weren’t we? And those of you who weren’t have probably heard about it from someone who was. It was the defining communal experience of our generation, at least until the towers fell.

 

But here’s the thing that was unique about my personal experience: I didn’t actually want to see Star Wars. I had no interest in it whatsoever, and, in fact, I remember being frightened of it. I don’t recall why, but something in the TV ads gave me a major case of the willies.

Read the rest here.