Carv's Thinky Blog I'm an author with a focus on satirical science fiction.

Dear Katie Goldman,

I was planning on blogging about something completely different today. Then I read your story on CNN. I hope my friends are familiar with the story, but if not, they should read it right now. We can wait here till they get back.

The truth is, Katie, I'm not known far and wide as a guy who's great with people your size. I don't always know what to talk about with kids. As a matter of fact, I didn't get along well with most other kids when I was a child myself. Like you, I was different. I loved Star Wars! While other kids were learning baseball stats, I memorized the names of planets and the number of a certain Death Star garbage disposal (3263827--see, I still know it). I was also one of Jehovah's Witnesses, which is an oddball religion no one fully understands including the people in it; plus I was a brainiac, and a bit of a chunk. Then my school skipped me a grade, so now I was smaller than the other kids. You want to talk about bullying! People didn't just make fun of my stuff, they took it and threw it on the roof of the school! Then, as often as not, they beat me up for anything I did, especially for using words they didn't understand. I liked school, usually, but it was scary for a kid like me. I had to choose my route home carefully.

Earlier this year a man named Dan Savage started a campaign called "It Gets Better" for another kind of kid, one you'll learn about as you get older. For now, understand that no one is exactly the same as everyone else. Some of us are left-handed. Some of us need wheelchairs to get around or, like you, special gear to help them see better. Some of us like pizza and ice cream more than others, and it makes us fat. Others can't stop drinking or losing weight, and it makes them unhealthy and often profoundly unhappy. If loving Star Wars is what makes you different, Katie, I hope you've learned you're not as different as you thought last week. There are so many of us Star Wars fans out here in the big wide world, and as we get older, it gets better for us, too.

You've met people whose love of Star Wars has made them rich and famous. You've heard from people whose love of Star Wars kept them happy when everything else in their life was sad. Star Wars got me interested in science and movies and acting, and now I'm a teacher who writes about theatre. I even worked in the movie business for a while! When I heard your story, it made me so proud to wear the Star Wars T-shirt my friend Shawn gave me before you were born. I wore that shirt to Grauman's Chinese on opening day of Episodes I and II, and I wear it now in honor of you and your family. I wear it also in honor of a worldwide community of fans who've banded together to support you. The Force surrounds us, and it binds us. We're part of your family this week, Katie; and to quote another science fiction movie I love, this means something. This is important.

My brother liked Star Wars okay, but he loved football more. We're grown men now, and believe it or not, he still wears his favorite team's colors and gets upset when they lose. That's geeky, too, but it's who he is and it makes him part of a worldwide family just like ours. He and our dad spend hundreds of dollars to fly around the country and attend important games! Now, I still don't get why, between science fiction and sports, one is a silly activity for children with toys and video games and useless trivia and absolutely no business taking up a third of the nightly news...and the other is sports, but it's okay. Either way it's a fun thing that just makes us happy. When a football player makes a great catch, my brother sees a human being striving to run faster and jump higher than his body might tell him he can. It's inspiring. When Luke says "I don't believe it" and Yoda answers "That is why you fail," I feel closer to something bigger than myself. It encourages me to keep reaching for something just beyond the things I can see. When Yoda says, "Try not. Do!--or do not. There is no try," it helps me focus on becoming the grown-up I aspired to be when I was a kid. The things we love, even the goofy things we loved when we were kids and reluctantly admit we still love now as grown-ups, make us the best, most interesting, most wonderful people we can be.

I salute you, Katie. The Force is strong in you! (It's even stronger than a small pony; and that's pretty strong, that is.) You touched my heart today and made me even prouder than I was already to be a Star Wars fan for life.

Sincerely,
Your friend in Washington,
Carv