'star wars' from the mouth of babes

today i spent a good part of my day talking to tracy, the oldest 4-year-old in the world.

right off the bat, i knew i was getting more than i bargained for when one of the first things she asked me was, "can you tell me the story of star wars?"

suddenly, i was back in med school, with the same sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that happened every time i didn't know the answer to what was possibly a simple question. you have to understand: i know no star wars.

(i can hear muffled gasps. forgive me.)

i remember being dragged to the remake (remastering?) of the first – or fourth, as it turns out – star wars movie. i was in between two semifanatics who tried their darnednest to help me through the plot. the whole time, i was actually just debating on who was cuter: han solo or luke.

after that, i tried watching episode v on dvd. I TRIED, OK? TWICE. both times, i fell asleep during the war scenes.

i have to confess that i haven't even seen episode vi. oh but i know that darth vader is the father of luke. i mean, if i didn't, would i have gotten all the 'star wars' references in 'toy story 2'? nooo.

(does 'star wars references' sound wrong to you, too?)

so anyway, back to tracy.

"tracy, did you WATCH star wars? is that a movie for kids?"

"yes," she replied. "i wasn't scared at all!"

"ok, so YOU tell me the story." (i should've been a lawyer.)

"you know anakin?" she started, and went on to relay the saga ...

apparently, according to my new best friend, anakin is NOT anakin anymore. "he used to be from the light side, now he's on the dark side. that means he's bad." and somehow there was a fire, he got burned and had to have all his arms and legs cut off. oh and he lost his face. (tracy emphasized this using gestures, by the way. imagine it: a pretty little girl pretending to cut off her skinny extremities.)

"why did that happen!?" i asked, mortified that she actually saw this on film.

"he got into a fight. with obi wan coyobe."

"ahh."

that was when i knew we had to move on to another field of interest. we played a couple of games of tic-tac-toe, where, i am sorry to say, she beat the *!&%$ out of me.

i knew i should've let her continue with the rest of star wars instead. after all, i wanted to know what happened to that coyobe guy.

(i will end here before i succumb to the urge to insert a 'coyobe ugly' sentence.) (ha! did it.)