9.23.04

It was nearing midnight. A few beat up cars that looked like they should have been sent to the scrap pile long before tonight were all that sat in the parking lot when I arrived; just one more escaped junk heap convict to add to the tally.

Wal-Mart is a scary place no matter what time it is when you’re shopping. During daylight hours and anytime before about 10PM, it usually requires you carry two forms of ID on your person at all times. That way if you should get struck down by a demonic soccer mom and her five little Grendels as they scream down the toothpaste aisle in a flaming blue shopping cart from the lowest depths of Hades, they can identify the body after Mom has ground your nose into the speckled tile floor. After 10PM, when all the little monsters of the underworld are sleeping peacefully in their lairs, Wal-Mart changes from a Jerry Bruckheimer action flick to a George Romero zombie film. Like the zombies that invade a shopping mall in “Dawn of the Dead”, post-10PM Wal-Mart shoppers shuffle about with blank stares and hollow eyes, wandering aimlessly between the hunting supply aisle and the home furnishings department. Their clothes are in shambles; dirty, decayed, plastered with outdated pop culture icons or often consist of styles that should have been left in the fashion graveyard of 1992, such as Zubaz pants. The living dead are often missing teeth or have other hygiene-related deficiencies that keep them from being able to blend in to their equally horrifying suburban counterparts who get their shopping done before the nightly news. If you’re quick-witted and quick-footed, you should be able to avoid these creatures of the grave, which makes nighttime the best time to shop if you’re a spry young man like myself.

On this particular night, however, Wal-Mart was less a haven for the damned, and instead a place of holy pilgrimage for a small cult of believers. There are about a dozen in our congregation who have been stricken dazed by the magnitude of the event. So much so that we, too, wander aimlessly through the multimedia department as though we were one of the undead beings around us. There is a certain light in our eyes, though, that shows we are more aware of our surroundings than the brainless horde of flesh-consuming beasts. We look anxiously at one another with a knowing glance as if to ask, “Do you see it? Is it here?” A man with jet black hair standing on end stares into the empty abyss of DVD racks with unblinking eyes, obviously blinded by the lofty imaginings of what he is about to behold. Like a chameleon, his body moves slowly, meticulously, as he walks through the department with his head moving in quick, mechanical spurts scanning every inch of the shelves, waiting to flick out his sticky fingers like a tongue to consume his prey.

After a thorough evaluation of the inventory, I realize that my journey’s goal has not yet been unveiled. I decide my best bet is to stand by the check out counter where a skinny, wrinkled woman with grey blue eyes smiles at me with brownish teeth and asks, “Can I help you?” Before I have to respond, the voice of a Hillbilly God comes over the intercom with an announcement, “If yer here for tha Star Wars DVDs, go to tha front of tha store by the checkouts. We’ll be bringin’ em out to ya’ in uh minute.”

I smile at her and pointed to the sky, “Thanks, but I’ve heard my calling.”

Suddenly, new pilgrims appear as though by a miracle out of the plastic and metal shelving. The dozen now grows to twenty or more as we fall in line and march towards the front of the store where we will receive our just reward for braving the horrors of Wally World this late on a Monday night.

Just as our White Trash Messiah had foretold, a few minutes later a large cardboard box was being rolled towards us on a hand lift by a less than sanitary employee. The young man stops before us, flashes his gap-toothed grin and says, “Here ya’ go!” He tears at a corner of the box and the light from the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling six miles above, glances off a foil embossed box, blinding us all with the grace of this, our most holy artifact hidden within. It was like looking into the face of a digitally remastered for superior sound and picture angel. All of us were changed in some way; saved perhaps. We fell to our knees, some of us speaking in tongues, others speaking the binary language of moisture vaporators. We were then, each of us, given our own copy of the holy artifact, which we only need pay a penance of $46.01 (including tax) so that we might take it home and bask in its glory forever more.

As I left Wal-Mart I had a grin on my face at the realization of how silly it was for a 29-year old man to be buying movies he loved as a boy. To have taken time away from a valuable night’s sleep so that I might be operating at peak proficiency the next day at work was not a mature thing to be doing. But I didn’t care. Neither did the guys standing in Wal-Mart with me. Neither did the half-dozen guys I passed in the parking lot looking at my bag with nervous anticipation as if hoping there were still some left at 12:15AM. This is Star Wars. This is an institution that helped define a generation. This is an institution that helped define me and who I am today. Sure, some changes have been made to the films that very few of us are truly happy with, but I can’t help but be thrilled when something this major happens to these films like a DVD release. It took a little convincing, as I wasn’t going to buy them initially due to the changes made almost making the films feel as though they are foreign to me now. But that was before I really thought about what these films mean to me.

Star Wars has been a constant throughout my life. My interest in baseball cards, comic books, Transformers, He-Man, TMNT, video games, and virtually every other little hobby I’ve ever had, has waxed and waned over the years, but Star Wars has always been something I’ve loved. I don’t buy the toys anymore, or everything that has the Star Wars logo imprinted on it, but I still enjoy watching the films, talking about the characters, and sometimes even philosophizing about the benefits of a belief like The Force. The films have been inspirational to me in my writing by helping me try to create a world that my characters live in, rather than just presenting them on a blank stage of the imagination.

Most importantly, though, the films are still entertaining. I have only had the time to watch the first film thus far and it was like seeing it for the first time. Not because the digital age changes made it seem like a completely different film, but simply because the tale is timeless and enjoyable. Star Wars never gets old to me, and despite its obvious flaws, I look right past them. Maybe I’m "Star struck" or maybe I just need that one thing in my life that will always be there for me when I need it in a galaxy far, far away.

Space Monkey X