Pupule: Memories....

When I was a little kid I loved Japanese movies. My parents used to take me into the city to go to a high school that showed Japanese films in the evenings. I loved them. I cannot remember a time when I did not idolize Toshiro Mifune. The films were in Japanese with subtitles which made no difference to me because I was not old enough to read and understand the subtitles anyway. Through this venue I was exposed to fine Japanese films (Kurosawa, etc), but my favorites were the samurai movies. I still love them. At home I would watch the Japanese monster movies. When I love something, I love it all. I was never really into science fiction that much. Then, when I was still in grade school, Star Wars was released. That was it. I was obsessed. That summer, I rode my bike to the movie theater as often as possible and sat through multiple viewings each time.

In case you were wondering, I had very long hair, and yes, I would roll my hair up and walk around the house looking like I had 2 cinnabuns on each ear. One weekend, a Chicago radio talk show was hosting Carie Fischer, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill. The movie had just been released so nobody knew who any of them were. I only knew about them being on the show because my mother listened to that particular show all of the time. I was a kid. What did I know about "talk"? I had my ear to the radio and my hot hand on the phone. I got through. I got to talk to all of them and they in turn sent me an original Star Wars poster that they had all signed. I thought about this the other day and called to ask my mother if she could go look for that poster. (Remember the post about the sculpture and the torn out page from Domino? I almost never throw away anything I think is important) I am sure that the poster is still in her house because I remember seeing it in the closet of my childhood bedroom. No luck thus far. She did, however, find these. One of my sister's friends knew how obsessed I was. She must have told her Dad (who was always so kind to me as a kid). It turned out that his company was responsible for printing these Star Wars trading cards.

One night I arrived home to see a complete sheet of these cards waiting for me. I am sure that I screamed. It is huge. It is about 3 feet by 5 feet. There are several hundred cards.