OG’s BLOG

Funny about memory. I remember those Star Wars phone messages from 27 years ago like it was yesterday. I can still hear them… but now that I’ve seen the transcriptions, I see that I didn’t exactly remember them faithfully. Here’s the original:

HAN SOLO: “Until I ran into Ben Kenobi and Luke Skywalker, I had myself a pretty good little operation. They wanted a ride to Alderaan and they were willing to pay enough so I didn’t have to ask any questions. Now I’m in the middle of a rebellion. I’m spending half my time dodging Imperial ships and the other half avoiding Her Holiness. Not only that, but Jabba the Hut has a price on my head and he’s put Boba Fett on my trail. Something tells me it’s not going to get any better when The Empire Strikes Back.”

Here’s how I actually remember it:

HAN SOLO: “When I ran into Luke Skywalker and Ben Kenobi, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Now I’m spending half my time dodging Imperial Ships and the other half avoiding or holding them. Something tells me it’s only going to get worse when the Empire Strikes Back.”

Sure, some of that is due to the erosion of memory over time. Some of it is due to the fact that I actually couldn’t hear it all that well: “avoiding or holding them” instead of “avoiding Her Holiness”.

The funny thing is that I can remember the ends of these very clearly. C-3PO would come on and say “The Empire Strikes Back comes to a theatre near you on May the Twenty-first, Nineteen Hundred and Eighty”. Then, an announcer would come on and say, “Call next month for a new message.”

And did I ever call. I called at night before going to bed. I called first thing when I got home after school. I called on the pay phone in the hall while switching classes. Most of the time, the lines were busy, but when they weren’t, I got a dose of Star Wars.

You have to remember, back in those days, we didn’t have VHS or DVD. There was no internet. If you liked a movie, you waited for it to come back around in the movie theatre or show up on TV. Or you watched something much less well done but still inspired by what you loved. Star Wars paved the way for both the original Battlestar Galactica and the revamped Buck Rogers. And we lined up for them, watched week after week, getting a pale substitute of what we actually wanted.

Or we called the fan line and listened to a thinly disguised marketing pitch delivered by some of our favorite characters.

Ah. Those were the days.