If you are from the generation before mine then you saw the original “Star Wars” trilogy in the theater. If you’re like me and weren’t born when “A New Hope” was playing on the big screen, then how did you first see it? Well this is the story of my first time…

My father absolutely loved war movies. It didn’t matter if they were set in WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Civil War, or whenever… as long as it was a war movie he was happy. As a result he constantly made me watch war movies even though I hated them. I 100% loathed them.

So in 1990 when I was eight years old my dad brought home the Star Wars trilogy saying we HAD to watch them. I was already leery because it had “war” in the title and he always tried to trick into watching things I didn’t watch. To put my mind at ease he said that I could pick which of the three movies we watched first. Of course looking back, it seems blasphemous that he would allow me to watch the movies in anything other than chronological order, but that’s my dad for you.

He told me the titles: “A New Hope” “Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi.” Right away I didn’t want to watch “Empire Strikes Back” because of the world “Empire.” In my mind it conjured visions of some sort of Ancient Asian Empire where people on swords were fighting for honor or something boring. I also didn’t like the name of “Return of the Jedi” because to me “Jedi” sounded like some sort of fighter-pilot slang.

So I bluntly asked my dad if “Jedi” had fighter pilots and he said “It does sort of but not what you think.” So I said “I don’t want to watch fighter pilots. I hate fighters pilots. I don’t want to watch these stupid movies.”

Not watching the movies wasn’t an option and since I had already eliminated “Empire” and “Jedi” the only option we had was “A New Hope.”

So we sat down at around 8pm. Dad had made us dinner and we watched “A New Hope.” In all honesty I wasn’t fully hooked right away. I thought the storm troopers looked silly and that Darth Vader was more clumsy looking than scary. I was intrigued by the droids, but found Luke Skywalker to be a whiny baby. It was Han Solo that peaked my interest. He was just so freaking cool!

Also… and I don’t know how this had happened, but I had already seen “Raiders of the Lost Ark” so Harrison Ford was a familiar face to me. And yeah Indianan Jones is a great character and a smart ass and funny… but to a seven year old Han Solo just seemed sooooo much cooler.

We finished “A New Hope” and I demanded that we watch “The Empire Strikes Back.” We did and by the time we finished it was almost midnight. My dad wanted me to go to bed but who could sleep with Han Solo frozen in carbonite? I made a persuasive argument to my father explaining that clearly the story was meant to be watched all at once otherwise the filmmakers wouldn’t have put such a cliff hanger at the end of the second movie.

He laughed at me. He laughed very very hard. He told me that he had to wait not just one night, not a day, not a week, not a month… but YEARS between “Empire” and “Jedi.” He explained that it drove him and millions of other people crazy waiting to find out what had happened.

So being me I said “But Dad, I’m your one son, as someone who loves me why would you want to make me go crazy waiting when you have the power to let me find out what happens now.”

Growing up I had figured out that if I gave my father any kind of argument that sounded legitimate I normally won (except when he used the cliché’ “’Cause I’m your Father and I said so” line). Honestly looking back I think because of the fact that my mother was out of town and because he truly enjoyed sharing the experience with me he decided to let me stay up to watch “Return of the Jedi.” Plus he probably thought I’d fall asleep during the movie since my normal bedtime was 9p.m.

Boy was he in for a shock! We watched “Return of the Jedi” and when it finished I was more hyper then if I had eaten several cups of sugar. I was running all of the house pretending to have jedi powers and jumping off furniture as if I were in a huge battle. Dad was the one who ended up falling asleep and I re-watched “Empire,” trying to imitate Yoda’s training lessons as I watched (I was sure if I exactly mimicked what Luke was doing that I could unlock my own jedi powers).

I don’t remember what time I finally went to bed, but I definitely finished the second viewing of “Empire” without falling asleep. When it ended I brought a blanket downstairs from my bedroom and then crawled on top of my dad (who was fast asleep on the couch) and went to bed.

In the morning when he did “I told you so” in regards to the movies being good and not “war” movies I said to him, “Yeah but it would have been cooler if Han Solo was a jedi!”

So that was my first time. What was yours?