Darth Vader and (our) Son.

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...  Last Christmas (2012) in Utah...

Steve's big brother gave him a book by comic artist Jeffrey Brown entitled Darth Vader and Son. We all flipped through it and giggled at the idea of Darth Vader parenting 4-year-old Luke Skywalker (Ridiculous! What a notion!) and took it home to rest safely in our bookshelf until we needed a laugh.

And then, one day, as if by fate--or perhaps by the unknowable powers of the Force--it fell into Charlie's hands.

The obsession started slowly.

He knew it was "Daddy's book," and that prowess alone was enough to make it interesting enough to take to bed for nap time perusals, but soon that wasn't enough. He wanted us to read it to him. Nevermind that it wasn't actually a storybook (or that he couldn't possibly get the jokes). So we did.

At first we were kind of stoic about it, but soon Steve and I started reading the dialogue correctly, with Luke's whiny true-to-the-movie intonations demanding they "go to Toshi station after nap" or for Ben to "tell him I'm ready!" Darth's voice got deeper, duskier, and generally more James-Earl-Jones-esque. Soon we'd hear Charlie talking to himself in the other room, doing his best Mom-as-Vader impression as he warned himself menacingly, "I am altering the deal. PRAY I don't alter it any further..."

In fact, Charlie learned so much of this book by heart, it became hard for us to differentiate between his normal three-year-old conversation and perfect recitation of this book. He'd start shouting, "Dad! Dad! Dad!" and then totally ignore Steve when he responded, "What?" Because he wasn't talking to him--he was mimicking the page where Luke interrupts a holo-call between Darth and the Emperor. Or he'd go on a tangent about robots and then laugh to himself, "IIIIIIIII'm talking about Star Wars!" He also became especially attached to R2D2, with whom he seemed to relate on a deeper, more meaningful level than any of the other characters.

Gracie got into the action, too, using her newly honed reading skills to read this book to Charlie when she was feeling big-sisterly. They got a LOT of great laughs out of this, giggling at the pages together as only siblings can.

So you can imagine their joy when we told them we were going to let them watch an actual Star Wars movie. They hustled into the family room and prepared to have their minds blown. Little did they know how very much that would happen.

No sooner had Darth Vader appeared onscreen than I, their mother, found myself tasked with the unpleasant job of explaining the realities of the movie's family relationships to Grace. First item on the list? Letting her know that Darth Vader--the hilarious and oddly clad father of precocious Luke in our current favorite bedtime story--was... the bad guy.

She looked at me, almost disbelieving. "But... He's Luke's dad." (Also, she had no idea that the book had basically been the biggest spoiler of her life--you're not even supposed to know that little parentage nugget until the end of the next movie, kiddo.)

Me: "Yeah, but Luke doesn't know that. He thinks his dad died."

Grace: "..."

Me: "He thinks Darth Vader killed his dad."

Grace: "..."

There were some other interesting moments. Clearly Steve and I had forgotten why this movie wasn't rated G. Like in the bar (you know, the bar where where Han shot first (says the nerd)) when that one guy gets his arm cut off? Remember that? Yeah, I failed to recall that in time to shield her from it, so that happened and she was watching the TV with her brow furrowed as she asked, "Who's arm is that?"

So then I tried to explain (a) whose arm it was and (b) that it wasn't real because the movie was pretend and so the arm was pretend... Yeah.

Charlie, meanwhile, ignored the movie when there were people doing stuff, but hardly missed a moment of R2D2's screen time.

And, in related news, I've been trying to teach him to sing Bill Murray's Nick Winters lounge act Star Wars song. "Star Waaaaars... If they should bar waaaars... Please let these Star Waaaars....

....Stay."