Does your life have pivot points?
Moments or sequences you can point to knowing how the person you are is shaped by what happened then?
Recently, I’ve dwelled on the nine years between 1977 and 1986, specifically between my ninth and eighteenth birthdays- I’ve been luck to have big events happen on birthdays. I don’t really understand why it works out that way but no use in denying it.
But the easy-to-identify pivot from childhood to adolescence is Star Wars. The movie was a revelation to me- I was a Star Trek and Planet of the Apes junkie but none of that sparked the imagination of a nine-year old boy like the one and only time I sat in a theater to watch an epic space fantasy unfold before my eager eyes.
A little over two and half minutes in, I was hooked:
I was blown away by the whites and grays, the strange rectangular blisters protruding from the walls… the differentness of it. A lifetime of seeing science fiction depict smooth, sleek technology never prepared my eyes for this image. And yet there’s a sense of the ordinary about it, too.
Everything Changed
We all know the release of Star Wars changed everything pop culture and I’m not here to catalog the ripples of cultural change triggered by that one big Star Wars rock.
But I can tell you about some the events that echo Star Wars and the times when I saw it. And with the benefit of hindsight I see the events of those days as I did then and now.
So buckle up: Mike is not in Kansas anymore- or again.