A Star Wars Holiday

Being an Uncle is awesome.

Being an Uncle with Nephews who love Star Wars is even MORE awesome.

This holiday, I went up to my mom's house to spend time with family- which included my oldest Sister's two boys- one five, the other one and a half. Thanks to the miracle of Skype, the oldest of those two had already seen a lot of my collection of Star Wars toys. Needless to say, he wanted to see these toys 'in person'.

So it was that when I loaded up my car, the trunk was filled with the cream of my collection- the 'Hoth Playset' as I now call it. This included an AT-AT walker, a Snowspeeder, a Squad of Snowtroopers, a Squad of Rebel Hoth troopers plus some taun-tauns, a Wampa, and various droids and the like. Also along for the ride were a TIE fighter, an X-Wing, a Y-Wing and Boba Fett's Slave I.

I arrived before the kiddies, so I had a little time to 'set up'. Of course when they arrived, I had to do the Uncle thing and pretend that I had forgotten to bring my toys. My sister unfortunately ruined my teasing by telling her son I was full of beans. Within moments, my oldest Nephew and I were playing Star Wars.

And you know what? It is still fun. We had a blast- and more importantly- HE had a blast. In particular, he loved the Y-Wing. This made me grin as I have to admit that as a kid, that particular toy would have been my favorite as well. We are talking the 'Old Republic' version of the Y-Wing here, from the Clone Wars series. This features seating for a Piot, a Gunner AND an Astromech droid- plus it has spring loaded pop-up missile bays- into which you can fit ANOTHER droid (or so my Nephew discovered). It could also FIRE six spring-launched missiles and drop two bombs. Yep, that would be my favorite, and it certainly was his.

But lets not forget little brother. The one-and-a-half-year-old was just as fascinated by the toys as his older brother. Again I had to grin. Even at that age, he totally 'got it'.. you put the pilots into the cockpit, you take them out, you fire the missiles, you put the missiles back and fire them again.

Sigh. Good times.

In any case, I am glad to see that some things DO seem to bridge the generations. Say what you want about the electronic age and all the distractions and entertainments therein. There is still something amazing about actually holding a toy and playing with it. I'm not sure that will ever go out of style.

In case you were wondering what the exact point of this post was, there isn't one beyond the fact that playing Star Wars remains awesome. That is all. Happy New Year, everyone.