Gotta Get 'em All!

I wanted this so badly, but never got it. I got the "Cloud City Carbonite Chamber" set instead - not nearly as exciting, though somewhat macabre. My 3rd grade friend David Epstein had it, and I visited often for this reason. Davey wore a Star of David and looked Jewish and was in fact the first Jewish person I ever met, and the only Jew I would know until college. Where I met many, and to this day most of my best friends are Jewish, and I love them all dearly.

Unfortunately, back then, the only thing I knew about Jewish folk was the Holocaust (WW2) and slurs. Many slurs, which I, to my shame, engaged in as well. I didn't know any better.

I liked Davey a lot and I got introduced to bagels - which were marvels in my family. So ethnic! He also had the Falcon, and I associated this with being rich - IE being Jewish, who were all rich, as everyone said. I had a revelation in college about this memory, since Davey lived in the same California slum I lived in, he could not have been "rich". The slurs had colored my perception, my very memories of a cool time in my life - since I got along smashingly well with the entire Epstein family.  I have learned many lessons about this experience, all of them good, I think.

One of them: don't ever get too comfortable with your perceptions - they can be altered by the culture around you. You must be able to step back and see the bigger picture, the wider world, the reason behind the reality. Only then can you feel somewhat confident you're fair in your assessments. But even then, ever and always on guard.

And with that, I give you ironic Star Wars products:

Hungarian or some such knockoff. Note the calculator used in the photo.

This was really the Jawa's fault - who else ratted out the location of the Skywalker moisture farm? Like Obi-Wan said, it wasn't Luke's fault, and he could have done nothing to stop it, and probably would have been killed as well. And R2 is to thank for this stroke of luck, showing again how all the Star Wars movies are really about R2.

Or a sled. Wells had no idea what he was missing out on.