When I saw the headline "Sith" Fans Maimed in Light Saber Mishap, I couldn't help but read the article. I had a light saber once. Totally true story. It was only a flashlight with a long hollow tube coming out of it that glowed red or blue when you turned it on, but to a little kid it was pretty damn cool. I got it for Christmas right after Return of the Jedi came out, and couldn't wait to play with it. What made everything cooler was Kurt (the neighbor kid) got one too, and we were planning on staging some epic battles with them. As epic as our 8-year-old selves could make them that is.

We had one battle. One. Why you might ask? In all of our planning the one thing we didn't count on was my enthusiasm. As a child (and even now as an adult) there were very few things I was good at. However, I always made up for my lack of ability with enthusiasm. Through the course of my life I have managed to throw bowling balls behind me, wreck several bicycles (not my own of course), and take out an entire tree fort. It's not deliberate, it just happens.

When it came time for our first battle we decided we needed someplace epic. The obvious choice was the big deck on the back of his house. It was huge, it was elevated, and we could jump from it to the backyard (aerial maneuvers are so epic). After much arguing it was decided that I would be the one who got to say you're not my father (I was three months older after all). With all that laid out we proceeded to battle -- for about 30 seconds. It was at that point that I thought I should execute some sort of spinning move. In my mind I could see myself spinning around and bringing my light saber down across Kurt's shoulder. Cool, right? In reality I over spun myself and instead of taking a swipe at his shoulder I ended up cracking him in the head. Hard. And even though the light sabers were plastic, cracking him in the head managed to knocked him on his booty and raise a rather angry looking bump. My light saber didn't come out of the battle unscathed either, as it was sporting a Kurt sized dent right in the middle of the tube. Not good.

Kurt was a trooper so we probably would have still tried to hold other battles (I had injured him only three times at this point, his sister once), but his mom saw me crack him in the head and was not happy. While she didn't hold me totally responsible, she did feel that light sabers (even plastic ones) were too dangerous for 8-year-olds to play with. And since his mom and my mom were friends, both light sabers were promptly confiscated.

I guess the moral of this story and the news article is that some things (like light sabers) are better left on the movie screen.

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