It seems that most of my blogs come from things that I have either seen or read. I suppose this means I am alive. I blog therefore I am. Oh Descartes, where would the blogosphere be without you? For that matter, where would Twitter be without you?
I saw a commercial about kids traveling to imaginative lands and these lands resided within the confines of Disney World. It started out with two kids holding sticks while pronouncing Latin words better than an Ancient Roman Senator. Obviously they were wizards within the Harry Potter Universe battling it out to see who would overcome, good or evil. This idea of kids reenacting scenarios from popular media is not new, but seems to have reached a great deal of safety these days. These kids were merely pointing sticks at one another and giving each other a Linguistic lesson. What a boring play time. How can one even tell who's winning when two kids are shooting imaginary spells at each other? Cops and robbers had imaginary bullets, but there seemed to be a great deal of sportsmanship between who shot who first.
Back when I was a kid Star Wars was all the rage. For lightsabers we used sticks, but instead of waving them around in the air, like we were composers at a symphony, we smacked the hell out of each other with them, because that is essentially what they do in the movie. Not only was there an added level of physical harm, but an added level of creativity as well. See, if you get hit by an imaginary spell, like Sectumsempra, all you do is fall down and pretend to wince in pain, but soon you recover and go at it again. On the other hand, if an imaginary lightsaber strikes your wrist, not only do you have a stinging sensation on your wrist, you now effectively no longer have a hand to fight with, as it has been slashed off by the imaginary lightsaber. So now you have to fight with one hand. But it wasn't always the hand, sometimes it was a leg, or an ear and occasionally the head. The point is with each missing appendage, you had to relearn how to fight your opponent.
My brothers were masters at this. They would slash at each other for hours. My oldest brother was always kind, and would let my other brother choose who he wanted to be. Of course he always chose Luke Skywalker which would make my oldest brother Darth Vader. Since Darth Vader was older, taller, stronger and more precise in his attacks than Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader would always win. It was like a remake of the lightsaber fight in Empire Strikes Back, each time a different appendage of Luke's being cut off. The hand, the leg, a stab in the abdomen, and in the extreme remakes, decapitation. The best ones were Luke getting both a hand and a leg sliced off and watching him hop around while swinging his lightsaber stick frantically, hoping for that lucky blow. Alas, our yard did not have a mock central air shaft for Luke to fall down into. I fear in those cases the Empire may have prevailed.
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I have no idea of these brothers you speak of, but I have no doubt this blog posting is rife with inaccuracies. For instance, your older brother sounds like the kind of person who is much more likely to be Luke Skywalker: Brooding. Shy. Reserved. Likely to retreat to swamp planets for training above and beyond what a normal Jedi would seek, etc.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this other brother doesn't sound anything like Luke Skywalker. I picture him more as an outgoing, boisterous, cocky, cocksure cockpit dweller who shoots from the hip, yet somehow maintains a boyish air of innocence while at the same time remaining incredibly sexy Han Solo type. As noted above, I have no idea who these two are, but that's how I've always pictured them.
Signed,
Matt Harriford.
As an addendum, I would also like to note that it seems exceedingly unlikely that this "other" brother would be repeatedly bested in light saber battles considering you've always portrayed him as someone with a long reach and a cannon for an arm.
ReplyDeleteSigned,
Mr. Tanks.