By Zach Kim

When I was growing up, I was a massive fan of the Star Wars series. I watched all the movies, all the TV shows, and I owned hundreds of dollars’ worth of Star Wars Lego, so you could say I was a pretty big fan. For those who do not know about Star Wars, it’s a science fiction movie about a war going on in a galaxy far, far away. In Star Wars, the “good guys,” called Jedi, fight against the “bad guys,” known as the Sith. 

Like most days in grade three, I was sitting through my uneventful classes. I was sitting in my plastic chair, being a slave to long division, waiting for the salvation of the bell at 3:30. I headed to my last period class, which was the dreaded social studies course. Once I heard the sweet bell, my friends and I walked out of the bland classroom with a smile on our faces. We walked over to the play set on the school property, which we did most days.

I was running away from one of my friends on the play set when we saw Phoenix. Phoenix was one of the bigger kids in our grade. He dressed like the mean kids from movies, and he wore a shirt with a skull on it and had spiky hair. He was what one would consider a bully. Phoenix would chase kids around our soccer field, and he had an intimidating aura to him.

Phoenix immediately started chasing after my friend Kyle. Watching Phoenix run was like watching a giant who could run as fast as Usain Bolt. I did not know what to do while watching my friend get chased around like a mouse chased by a cat. I assumed that once Phoenix was done with Kyle, I was next, so my friends and I all ran home and left Kyle out to be hunted. I felt like the buffalo in the documentaries my parents watched who ran away when one of their own got picked off. Once we got to the block where we were going to split up and go home, I started thinking about what I should have done and what a Jedi would have done. I walked home feeling bad and wondering what happened to Kyle.

Once I knocked on my door, my mom was on her way out, and told me, “I’m going to the store. Nobody is home right now. Dad will be here in 30 minutes.” I walked through the threshold into the safety of my home. I locked the door behind her, and then I felt genuinely safe. I walked into the basement, reached into my cabinet of toys, and pulled out my blue Anakin Skywalker plastic lightsaber. I made my way up into the living room, and there it began.

I stood in my living room with the curtains drawn, my hands grasped on the plastic lightsaber, and I was ready to strike whatever forces came my way. The minute I opened my eyes, I became a 4-foot Jedi standing in the middle of a battlefield. I looked to my left, and I saw hundreds of clone troopers, and standing by my side was Commander Rex, my best trooper and my closest companion in this virtual world. We advanced up the battlefield, trying to reach the menacing General Grievous’s lair.

We advanced through the sandy battlefield of Geonosis. I deflected futuristic blaster shots, using my force powers, and slicing down separatist droids. When my grade 3 attention span ran out, Rex and I were suddenly the only ones left. We stood in awe of the tall doors to the lair of General Grievous.

I deactivated my lightsaber and put the hilt between my American eagle boxers and my black athletic Under Armour shorts. I slid open the two metal doors with the force powers I received once I picked up the plastic lightsaber. We walked through the doors, and the floor creaked with every step we took through the eerie hallway. “There are traps on the ground. My scanners picked them up,” Rex said. I used the extreme jumping Jedis do to jump over to the panel I saw on the wall and turned them off. We continued to walk down the hallway when I started to see a lit-up room. Once we got close, the doors suddenly shut. I ignited my blue lightsaber and cut a hole in the metal doors.

As soon as we crawled through the opening, we were in a circular room with glaring lights pointed at us. “I’ve been waiting for you,” Grievous said in a raspy voice over the com systems. I saw a large figure coming out of the shadows, and four arms popped out from within his cloak and four blue and green light sabers with them. I got into my fighting stance, dramatically drawing the plastic toy towards my plain blue shirt.

Grievous crawled on his prosthetic arms and legs like a spider, and when he stood up, we instantly locked light sabers. Once again, my patience caused me to skip forward, and soon, I was sitting on the floor, barely holding onto my consciousness. I saw Grievous advancing towards Rex, and I immediately shook off the “pain” and stopped Grievous from killing him–something I couldn’t bring myself to do against Phoenix. While I duelled with Grievous, I had no fears. As I fought, I dipped into my pool of confidence and power.

I could tell we are being bested as I pushed Grievous away with the force. Rex and I both escaped relatively safely. Suddenly, I heard a knocking noise, and at first, I felt like it was just my imagination getting out of control, but then I heard “Zach!”. I put the lightsaber down and blinked my eyes, but when they reopened, I was back in my living room. My Jedi robes turned back into my grade 3 apparel, and my glowing lightsaber turned into any other plastic toy. I dropped my lightsaber to the floor and rushed across the house to unlock the door, and just like that, I exited my galaxy far, far away.

Although I didn’t know it, when I immersed myself in the Star Wars world, my fears, reality, and responsibilities drifted away, and courage, confidence, and power came in their place.