I went to my first comic convention the other week, a Star Wars fan event and David Prowse was
there, Darth Vader himself. Being old
enough to remember him as the Green Cross Code Man, a super hero teaching kids
to cross the road safely I wanted to thank him for it.
But I broke a promise to myself in doing so. I was meant to thank him for something else,
far more important that happened in 1977, the year that Star Wars came out, but also the year my mum died.
I was nine at the time and my mum had been ill with cancer
for many years, something I was protected from, but aware that she wasn’t
well. Star Wars was released in the UK on 27th December 1977
and my mum died on the 29th December.
Star Wars was a
distraction to me, allowed me to disappear into a fantasy world to escape the
pain I was in. My dad worked and I was
too young to go to the cinema by myself and as our world had been turned upside
down, arranging to go with someone else was difficult. I didn’t even get to see A New Hope until 1981, a year after Empire came out when both were shown together.
Instead of going to see it, I was given a copy of the
novelisation of the film, I think I got it at Christmas but I’m really not sure
when. As a nine year old given a book instead
of going to see it might seem a bit crushing, but in fact it did something for
me that no words can ever compensate for.
I was a lazy student and couldn’t be bothered to learn to
read.
I could read, and I knew my reading age was a lot younger
than nine, only because of something that happened later. Doing a reading test at school the teacher
told my I went from a reading age of six to a reading age of thirteen in the
space of six months.
Star Wars taught
me to read and gave me a life long love of books.
I wish I had told David Prowse all that.
