Miles, like his father before him, likes Star Wars. He was riveted by A New Hope, has watched a few episodes of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, and we’ve been working through Tales of the Jedi together, not to mention the toys and books he has. He’s expressed a lot of interest in watching more of the movies. There’s just one problem — he flat-out does NOT want to watch The Empire Strikes Back. “It’s scary!” he’ll declare whenever I suggest it for family movie night. “I don’t like that one!” is what I’ll get other times, or maybe, “I’ve already seen that one!”
Tonight, he did want to watch a Star Wars movie, but again rejected The Empire Strikes Back. “But Miles,” I said, attempting to bargain with him, “it’s the next movie. You’ve got to watch this one next.”
“No!” he refused. “I don’t want to watch that one!”
Now, I knew Miles would love Empire, but how was I ever going to talk him off this ledge? And that’s when it hit me — Miles has a weakness, one that won’t be available to exploit much longer, that could give us a way to clear this hurdle.
“Okay,” I relented. “We won’t watch The Empire Strikes Back. We’ll watch a different one.”
As I inserted the disc in our Blu-ray player, Miles asked which movie we’d be watching.
“This one is Episode V,” I replied.
“Oh,” he said. “I like Episode V.”
As the movie began, as all Star Wars saga movies do, I offered to read the opening title scroll for Miles. I did, however, carefully omit four words — “the,” “empire,” “strikes,” and “back.”
Miles was a little too tired to make it through the whole movie, but he fought tooth and nail to keep his eyes open. Turns out, he does like The Empire Strikes Back.
The Perils (& Pride) of Paternity 