A Galaxy Not So Far Away by Glenn Kenny

Author:Glenn Kenny
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9781466892637
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

THE FORCE VISITS WILLOUGHBY, OHIO

ELWOOD REID

The summer Star Wars hit, I was, for lack of a better word, a pussy. And although I was large for my age, recent growth spurts had left me mushy and awkward, body shy in a neighborhood full of delinquents, gas huffers, S.P.E.D.s (older and unpredictably violent Special Ed kids or short bussers, who after years of torture had turned mean), brave turn-the-other-cheek Christians, thug jocks, burnouts, and pre-ADD nutjobs whose favorite trick was to ask if you’d ever met the Jackson Five and when you answered “no” they would then show you five knuckles, punch you in the mouth, and laugh at your fat-lipped stupidity.

I’d been in only one real fistfight and lost—chipped tooth, bloody nose, and a face full of snow. The noble peacenik wisdom of “Run and live to fight another day” didn’t mean shit in northeast Ohio. You either avoided conflict altogether or you joined the fray, took your lumps, and picked your spots. The trick was to survive until you could defend yourself. One way to keep the bullies and thrill-seeking sadists from circling was to strike a pose—model yourself on some widely understood tough guy and hope the powers that be bought the act long enough for you to actually grow balls and stand up to them. A few kids opted to be Steve Austin—The Six Million Dollar Man (a complicated act, involving lots of slow-motion running and odd sound effects), others modeled themselves on Jack Lambert—the Pittsburgh Steeler’s viscous mook of a linebacker who along with Mean Joe Greene (another model tough guy until the Pepsi commercial) regularly destroyed our beloved Cleveland Browns. There were even a few kids who went around talking and acting like Muhammad Ali, dazzling their would-be intimidators and upsetting their vaguely racist fathers with butchered white-boy versions of The Greatest’s poetic taunts. Then Star Wars arrived, and with it a whole new set of otherworldly heroes.

I remember dashing out of the packed theater still in the grips of the film—fists clenched and heart racing as kids made thrumming lightsaber sounds, panted like Darth Vader, and proclaimed the movie cool. I took out the small finger-shaped piece of meteorite I carried with me at all times and held it to the sky wanting very badly to be called away to a planet far, far away and launched on some great adventure. (I believed in aliens and UFOs, and the discovery of the large meteorite earlier that spring and its subsequent confiscation by NASA lab rats—another story—had only reinforced my irrational hope that if and when aliens landed they would know me by the piece of meteorite that I carried, slept with, and stroked.) But nothing happened, and as I walked across the bright parking lot, the movie magic fading fast, I pondered my own rapidly changing place in the neighborhood. Like Luke, I would have to master my fears and strike out on the dark adventures of adolescence, without the benefit of lightsabers or the Force.

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