May The 4th Be With You: Favorite Star Wars Memories

We here at LD are a bunch of nerds—lovable nerds to be sure, but nerds nonetheless. We can’t wait for the newest installment of the “Star Wars” saga. After watching the newest trailer we decided to celebrate the high, holy nerd tradition of “May the 4th Be With You” by sharing some of our favorite memories of “Star Wars” in our lives. We all have them, and we’re excited to share them with you.

Haley:

My brother and I memorized literally entire chapters of this Episode I information book we got for Christmas. We would run around the house and quote them to each other and to my parents and it was just totally bizarre. This is after my family saw the movie three times consecutively in theaters because the AC was broken at our house and it was summer in Alabama.

Carly:

My favorite memory was actually going to see “The Phantom Menace” in theaters when it first came out. I was at the height of my fanaticism with this franchise and the fact that a new movie was coming out for the first time in years was exhilarating. My family and I were out running errands on a weekend when they pulled into the movie theater parking lot and told me that they were taking me to the movie as a treat. It was one of the best experiences of my life (despite Jar-Jar). Queen Amidala was my everything.

Sara:

One Halloween in college, a boyfriend and I dressed as Stormtroopers. We made the costumes ourselves, using big shipping boxes for the heads. I think they came out great, but were impossible to see out of, so we stumbled around a lot—which, really was pretty on-brand for Stormtroopers (and for me). We were a pretty big hit at the dance party.

Mayura:

“Star Wars” is a way of life for my family. The only movies we watch together are “Star Wars,” “Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter,” since they are the only ones we can agree on, so every time I go home for the holidays we watch every single movie in the series. We even named our dog Anakin. Needless to say, picking a single memory is very difficult—our family celebrates the good times and comforts each other through the bad times by sitting down by the fireplace and watching “Star Wars” together.

However, one recent memory I have is when I came home from a date, and my mom asked me how it went. I vaguely told her it was OK but I wasn’t interested, and she started to go on a lecture about how I need to keep an open mind and not be so harsh. Then I told her the real reason why I wasn’t interested—the boy had gone on a rant about how he hated “Star Wars” and thought the movies were dumb. Immediately my mom said, “Oh, there’s no place for people like that in this home.”

Kirstie:

I spent my childhood watching the original “Star Wars” films with my dad, hearing him speak with such childlike wonderment of seeing the films in theaters for the first time. So when “The Phantom Menace” came out, it was a given that we would see it together as a family at midnight the morning it was released. My parents let my brother and I skip school so we could stay up late and go to the theater six hours early to wait in line with all the other “Star Wars” fanatics. This was the first time I ever saw what Fandom really was. The costumes, the enthusiasm, the fan theories. I was dazzled. My dad’s favorite memory of seeing the films in theaters had always been the audience cheering as the Lucasfilm logo would appear on the screen followed by the deafening roar of the crowd as the yellow “Star Wars” logo would slam onscreen to the famous theme song. A moment I will never forget is seeing this for myself on the big screen for the first time. As a new set of “Star Wars” films is released, I can’t wait to feel the nostalgia all over again.

Lindsey:

My family has always used movies for our family nights and “Star Wars” has always held a special place for us. Technology has given us so much in the way of special effects, and it was easy as a child to watch “A New Hope” and see the story and effects as cheesy, but listening to my father wax nostalgic about how cool it was then bonded us. It was easy to sit with him and think about what my dad was like as a teenager. These stories gave us all a frame of reference as a family. I remember the day we finally invested in a “Star Wars” collector’s set with the three original movies. All of us were so excited, and we raced home to marathon them all with as few breaks as possible. We quoted all our favorite parts, and dad compared the quality of the original version to our new family dvds.