So Afraid Of The Darth You Could Sith Your Pants

This one is going to start out with one of my horribly vague assertions where, no matter how odd or inaccurate the example is, I pretend that I’m trying to illustrate a greater truth. Further, I will pretend the accuracy is not axiomatically the important point, it’s the universal truth that I bring to the table as I ladle out the crud.

So, apologies to people with far sturdier methods of parable and homily, but the show must go on.

I remember reading a book when I was pretty young that I’m sure was called ‘Children of the Lie’.* It was one of the many fashionable behaviour and psychology books that littered my parent’s bookshelves from the 70s onwards. It was about what parents do that utterly fuck-up children, who then carry it on to fuck-up their own children… I think. (Stuff like letting them read lots of behavioural and psychology books during the 70s and 80s.)

In it was the tale of a kid who didn’t have it so good as far as his parent’s sensitivity was concerned.

They lived in an American farming community and did all the things that entails, including thinking it’s a good idea to present children and teenagers with firearms. The much beloved elder brother is given a particularly sort after gun as a significant present, which he inevitably shoots himself with. He was depressed, or didn’t like guns, or both, but the salient point in the first part of the account was that it was a really stupid thing to give this particular kid a gun. The family is destroyed and confused. "Why?" they ask themselves. They console the younger son and say the right things, “You’re the most valuable thing in the world to us.” and then on his next significant birthday, present him with the very gun that his idolised elder brother killed himself with. Actions speak louder than words and that is yelling, “Can you go out and top yourself, please?” 

The result? I don't think he grew up into a very nice person... or something. But you get my drift.

So, you’re a little kid who’s watched Star Wars and you understand that Darth Vader is not a good guy and is driven to his evilness in the most horrible circumstances. Off to bed you go and lie there in the dark underneath the Darth Vader wall clock your parents gave you for Christmas. In case you weren’t going to get the wrong idea, my young padewan, if you look at the packaging, the thing has glowing eyes, and, I can’t stress this enough, breathes in the dark.

Sweet dreams, young prince.


*Before anyone says, "You could've Googled the book Nick." I did. Its fundamental refusal to appear drove me to write the first paragraph. It makes me fear for the confidence I have in my memory when, if I don't get a search result, I doubt its existence.