Random Star Wars Memories

I blame my cousin Cristina for my Star Wars obsession. If she hadn’t left that Star Wars book lying around almost 12 years ago I would never have picked it up and been sucked into the Star Wars galaxy.

It’s also because of her that I know so much. She answered every question I ever had about the movies, and since she already owned a good portion of the books she loaned them to me so I could read them. When I became an addict she became my supplier.

Then came Star Wars Trivial Pursuit. We used to play against her brother David, and there were a few lucky times when he actually beat us (but he cheated, he used to read the question cards ahead of time, that stinker). And then came a time when everyone stopped playing with us since according to the rules a player keeps going until they get a question wrong. Well, Cris and I would pretty much dominate the game and everyone else would get one, maybe two turns if they were lucky.

So then we started playing each other. I have never been more challenged in my life!! We always roll the dice to determine who goes first, and then we’ll just start answering questions, and usually whoever goes first gets almost all the little chips you need to go to the final question before the other person gets to go.

However, it’s always a close game. There was one time when Cris had all the chips and went to the “for the win” question, and I had only a few chips, and then the “for the win” question was “who was the commander of the second Death Star?” We both just stared at the screen going “we know WHO it is, but what the hell’s his name?!” (for those who are curious his name is Moff Jerrjerrod) But that kept the game going for a little bit longer since neither of us knew the answer.

Or there was one time that I was on a roll, I had only one chip left to get and then I get a question “what does the acronym AT-TE stand for?” I was stumped. I know almost any of the others, I know what AAT means, AT-AT, AT-ST, AT-PT, MTT, STAP… but I was drawing a blank on AT-TE. Well, I remember it now! It stands for All Terrain Tactical Enforcer. But that question effectively ended my question run.

When I went away to UVM a few years ago we thought we weren’t going to get to play each other for a while, and then Cris came up with an ingenious plan… She got her laptop and put it in front of the desktop computer, turned on the webcam on the desktop and then set up the game on the table and she would roll for me and ask me questions, and I could watch and be sure she wasn’t cheating when it came her turn to read questions, and we used her laptop to play the DVD. It was so much fun!

Whenever we play our games whoever wins is almost purely determined by the rolls of the dice because sometimes of us can get all the chips really quickly because the dice lets us get to those questions really quickly. Other times the dice screws us over and it takes forever, and the more questions we have the higher a chance to get something crazy like “what does AT-TE stand for” that we know the answer and are just drawing a blank on it.

Since Cris spent a few months serving as an Army nurse in Afghanistan we haven't gotten to play in months. I miss it because we always have fun no matter who wins. Now that she's back stateside hopefully we'll get a chance to play again, even if its our tried and true webcam method.