When teenage boys grow up...

We’re looking at switching to Liferay (an open source enterprise portal solution thingy – I’m very technical) at work.

While browsing the forums in the community section of the company’s page, I noticed something... unexpected. The ranks they use for forum members are all based on the Star Wars ‘verse – youngling, padawan, Jedi knight, etc.

Though I am a former member of the Cult of Lucas , this does not fill me with a sense of calmness and well being.

Baby, come back...

I've got iTunes on random and all of a sudden Donna's Theme from the Doctor Who Series Three soundtrack starts playing. I do nothing for three minutes and fourteen seconds. I just sit in my seat and grin.

So Long and Thanks for all the Fish

“Nothing, just... Come on inside.” He leads me downstairs to his room and I sit on the couch, tense and unnerved. Jeremy almost never worries – certainly not about me – and I think it must be something truly horrible for him to be watching me with such care.

He takes a seat across the room and rubs his forehead. “Douglas Adams is dead.”

My jaw drops open. Words come out. Lots of incoherent syllables and, then, “No. Can’t be. It has to be a mistake.”

“Hun, he died of a heart attack.” Jeremy stands up, takes a half step towards me, and then changes his mind.

“But – but he’s only 49. It’s gotta be a different Douglas Adams.” Jeremy shakes his head. “He’s really dead?” I ask, my voice small and trembling.

Jeremy nods and I burst into tears.

After awhile, after the torrent subsides, Jeremy lets me sit on his lap as I scroll through a news story he bookmarked for me. A black and white photograph of Douglas smiles up at me and my heart feels like it’s breaking a little bit. “There’ll never be another book,” I whisper and the words feel heavy.

There will never be a line I haven’t read before – something new to underline and memorize. Douglas Adams is dead and all I can do is stare at the screen in disbelief.

The most important meal of the day

“Please Daddy?”

My father sighed. “Pumpkin,” he said in the patient tones reserved for difficult five year olds, “you don’t even like that kind of cereal.”

We walked through the turnstile and into the grocery store. It was crowded and he made me take his hand. “But Daddy...”

He looked down at me, my friendly giant of a father. “It’ll taste like Cheerios,” he warned. “Are you going to eat something that tastes like Cheerios?”

Stupidly enough, I shook my head. At five, I was not yet an accomplished liar.

“We can’t buy food that you’re not going to eat.”

I realized my mistake. “I’ll eat it! I’ll eat it!” I insisted, too late.

My father shook his head. I dragged him to the cereal aisle and pointed out the masks on the back of the box but he was unmoved. He thought, I’m certain, that there was a lesson in this.

The next day, we visited my aunt and uncle. My cousin greeted me wearing a cardboard Luke Skywalker mask. I kicked him and burst into tears.

The Superhero

His back was too me but he must have been four or five. He trudged along, holding his mother’s hand, completely un-phased by the busy street. He had a head full of blond curls that Colin Baker would have envied and he was clad in a Spider-Man costume.

From their unhurried pace and the shopping bags in his mother’s other hand, it seemed clear that this was just an ordinary day – they weren’t on their way to a party or a special event. It was Tuesday and, in a five year old’s world, that was reason enough to don a Spider-Man outfit.

So much for my happy ending

“My ending was better.” I kicked at a pebble in the parking lot.

“Your ending?” one of James friends asked. There were five boys in total and I couldn’t keep their names straight.

“The ending I had planned out in my head before seeing the movie – the one I thought might have occurred to Lucas.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Instead we got an overdramatic ending that messes with the continuity of the original trilogy.”

All six boys blinked and I wondered if I were talking an alien language.

“Continuity?” one ventured.

“Luke asks Leia is she remembers her mother – her real mother – when they’re in the Ewok village. He makes a point of stressing the word real, implying that Leia knew that her adoptive mother was not her real mother.”

“Maybe her adoptive mother died and her father remarried?”

“Or maybe Lucas can’t be bothered to line things up properly.” I shot James a dark look. Where did he find these guys and why couldn’t we have gone on our own. As usual, he was trying – and failing – not to laugh at me.

“So what was your ending?” one of the braver boys asked.

“Simple. Bail Organa turns out to have loved her for years and he sweeps her off to Alderaan. She never recovers and dies a few years later.”

“Which one was Bail Orgian?” this from the complete novice who had only started watching with The Phantom Menace.

“Jimmy Smits,” I replied, gently.

The others groaned. “No way. No way in hell.”

“No way what?”

“No way that guy could get Natalie Portman!”

It was my turn to blink. “It’s Jimmy Smits,” I said. They just looked at me – six pairs of blank eyes. “Jimmy Smits,” I repeated.

They shook their heads. They were adamant. In their minds there was no way a guy like Jimmy could land a girl like Natalie. “This is why none of you have girlfriends,” I muttered under my breath.

It was months before James let me near his friends again.