Luke was using his feelings to guide his fighter through the narrow canyon walls. It was critical that no one saw his approach.
Zigging and zagging passed huge rock walls and gigantic tree roots he raced toward the Princesses location and hoped he made it there on time.
He knew she would be surrounded by all of his enemies; The Empire, Cobra, and V.E.N.O.M., and the entire rescue plan depended upon the element surprise.
As the cliff walls came to an end he piloted his aircraft up and over the rim of the canyon, doing a barrel roll and adjusting his angle so that he could see her.
She was positioned in a cove beneath the biggest tree he’d ever seen. It was hundreds of feet tall and its ancient roots stretched above the ground in all directions. And the enemy was everywhere!
As Luke made his final approach he hoped his friends stuck to the plan. He was the distraction you see. When the Commanders troops began to chase him, his best friends; Han, Chewie, Trakker, Lady Jane, and Duke, would assault the compound and rescue her.
The maneuver from the canyon put him high above the lair and he was about to nose dive into attack position, setting his lasers to full.....
“Freddy. FREDDY! It’s time for dinner, come inside now” my grandmother yelled from her back porch.
I was in the ravine behind her trailer playing out these dramatic scenes with all of my favorite toys; Star Wars, G.I. Joe, and MASK.
She was high above me on the multi level porch that my grandfather built by hand. When I try to remember it, I see it as being three levels high and rising many feet up the steep hillside, but in reality I’m sure it was only a few feet.
I collected my things from the base of tree that had become the outlet for my imagination and began heading up the stairs to the green and white trailer where dinner would be served.
My grandma kept an immaculate home, filled with interesting trinkets that I recall to this day. There was a lamp, shaped like an owl seated on a limb, with an inexplicable bowl at its base that was always filled with candy. There were little hinged, metal boxes for hiding toys and secrets, handmade blankets that she had crocheted herself, and plants. Lots and lots of plants.
I remember everything being green and white. The shag carpet, the embroidered floral patterned couch, and even the wallpaper, it was all green and white. In my mind it was perfect, but it wouldn’t be on that hillside much longer.
Not long after the massive flood of 1982 we would move from the trailer park that my grandparents managed to the countryside (ironically the trailer park was named CountrySide). Back then it was so far from the city and very remote. Both my grandparents trailer and my mom’s trailer, which sat just a few lots away, would get transported to this little farm that my grandparents bought.
I would leave behind the other kids like myself (I can barely remember their names now); poor kids from a trailer park with hand-me-down clothes and dirt on their faces, and find myself surrounded by kids from wealthy families who wore all of the nicest clothes, shoes, and accessories .
These kids lived in beautiful neighborhoods with large houses designed by architect’s and I had never seen anything like them before. My life up to that point consisted of mobile homes. I thought everyone lived in a mobile home until we moved to the country.
It was also around this time that I stopped growing. It would later become worrisome to my mother and she would seek out the help of specialists who tried to make me grow.
It didn’t work. Hormone shots in my arms everyday for six months didn’t make me grow more than a quarter of an inch, but it did make my upper arms immune to the punches of my friends when they gave me “two for flinching”.
As all of my friends kept getting I taller and more mature, I just remained a little kid. And this lasted well beyond elementary school.
My first driver’s license listed me as 4’11” and 80 pounds and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles suggested that I use a booster seat to drive my mom’s Mercury Sable so that I could see over the rear seats while backing up.
You might be feeling sorry for me at this moment and are probably thinking that I got bullied and knocked around by all the bigger rich kids, but don’t. Because I wasn’t.
As I am now, I was very social back then. I was a cute kid, with long floppy hair, and I had friends in all the stereotypical high school circles. Jocks, nerds, skaters, cheerleaders; whatever the groups were I had friends in all of them.
I don’t think any of them saw me as different, but I sure felt like I was on the outside looking in. Sometimes, I still do.
I think that I was silently embarrassed by many things as a young man. My height, my economic background, the trailers, the menagerie my grandma created on her little farm over the years (if you didn’t see it you wouldn’t believe the quantity and types of animals we had), but I don’t think I ever let anyone know that I was embarrassed.
Maybe embarrassed isn’t the correct word. Inferior might be though. I felt like I was less than everyone else.
I suppose I could’ve retreated into that feeling and let it control my life, but instead I used it as fuel for a fire that I continue to stoke.
The imagination of that little boy in the ravine behind his grandparents house has always kept me wondering, what could I become?
