Losing Time

Fair warning, this post delves into Star Wars and then goes into personal real thoughts.   Depending on your geek factor this may not be the post for you.

I haven’t read a Star Wars book in over a decade.  I used to obsessed with them.   Up until 1998-1999ish I would say I had owned and read every single book that had come out.   I can’t tell you why I stopped reading them, just that I did.   It wasn’t lack of interest, but more likely a lack of effort as the Star Wars extended universe exploded.   I did just jump in yesterday with the New Jedi Order.   Unfortunately I was a couple chapters in before I realized I was in the wrong book of the series.   I’ve now started the proper first book, so we’ll see how it goes.   The New Jedi Order series was one that friends were excited when a new one came out, so that’s why I started back in with this series.

The Star Wars books have always jumped all over the timeline.   In one book Han and Leia are married, and in the next book we read about their courting period.   Being dropped into the middle of the action is something a Star Wars reader is used to.   This is why I didn’t realize I didn’t start at the first book.   This series happens further in the future than anything else I think I’ve read, happening around 20 some years after Return of the Jedi. Here are some things that I noticed:

  1. Luke and Mara are still together, this of course it not surprising since they were dating when I left off.
  2. Jacen and Jaina are full-bore Jedi now.  This I can say screwed me up the most.  The idea of Jacen in a light saber battle alongside Luke or Jaina piloting an X-Wing just blows my mind.  They were always kids that were just old enough to have their little brother Anakin be around five or six.   Beyond that they were trapped in a time bubble, eternally that age.   Seeing them mature as adults blows my mind.
  3. Luke has a kid.   I didn’t get far enough to see what his son’s name is, but that screws with my head also.
Having dropped out and dealing with this new concepts just makes me look back at life.   My son is two and half and his age goes one of two ways.   The first is that he’s only been around for a few months.   Someone that is new and fresh and hardly any time has passed.   The other is that he’s been this way forever, that he is frozen in a bubble.   I do know both these scenarios are false, but that’s what it feels like.   Time is always going to be slipping away and someday it will truly hit me.  It does help that I’m a geek man-child.  Because of that, he may actually out mature me.  That will be a screwed up day.
While reading the book I get the perception of losing time in between the previous incarnations of the characters to the new ones, I have to come to grips with that.   One day when I realize my son no longer needs fed at all or have someone watch him in the bathtub – I am going to be screwed in the head. Of course every parent needs to come to grips with this.   The parents that try to be involved and love their kids of course have it hit harder.   The bad parents, when it hits them, just live in regret for all the time they have missed.   Luckily I’m the former, not the latter (at least in my perception).
Then again someday my son might read this post and go “Why the heck were you still reading Star Wars at thirty-five?”.   My response is going to be “What kind of geek did I raise you to be?  Go to the wall and get in time out!”
October 21, 2011 – 1:21 pm | By Creeva | Posted in Media, Personal Writing | Comments (0)