Star Wars

So, I guess it's inevitable after sending Rachel to preschool: the kid has become obsessed with the Star Wars trilogy. (I'm talking, of course, of Episodes 4, 5 and 6. Episodes 1, 2 and 3 we do not speak of). She spent the entire day demanding that I tell her the entire story, explaining the characters, why they do what they do, etc. This lasted until I finished at dinnertime, after which she said, "But what does the story MEAN?"

"You mean, what does the story really say?" I asked.
"Yeah," she answered.
"Well," I said. "It's really about the fight between good and evil."
"Good always wins," she said confidently.
"Not always," I said. "Sometimes, evil wins."

I got her all revved up to watch the movie with me, relieved that finally we would be able to watch something good together instead of yet another round of My Little Pony or Barbie/Princess/Whatever/Swan Lake/Giselle/Insert ballet of choice here...until, an hour after putting her to bed at the insanely early (for us) hour of 9:15, she awoke to go to the bathroom and informed me she had a bad dream.

"What was it about?" I said crossly, since I was trying to rest myself and also trying not to think about everything I had to do before we head to Doug and Linda's for a cookout tomorrow.

She dreamed that she had died and Darth Vader had cut her body up. (Her imagination had been particularly captured by the image of Darth Vader cutting off Luke Skywalker's arm in "The Empire Strikes Back"). She begged me to tell her if the story was true in any way, and I said of course not, it was a fake story, it wasn't even BASED on anything real (which, really, is not true; George Lucas borrowed the plot points from Greek mythology and everywhere else). That seemed to reassure her, and she is sleeping as I write this...after promising not to wake me up tomorrow and to read books in her room before I get up.