Time to say goodbye to my old friend, Vader Dad
Darth Vader is dead.
He’s buried in a brown paper shopping bag, the helmet, jumpsuit, belt and light sabre crammed in tight, the whole package then stuffed under the shoe rack in my bedroom closet. Look closely enough and there are teeny, tiny tears of sadness and neglect on the mask.
Vader was my go-to Halloween costume for a solid decade. He was built in bits and pieces, assembled on an ad hoc basis until what started as a bit a fun — hey look, Dad is getting dressed up, too — evolved into full blown cosplay, a grown man concerned his boots and gloves didn’t have the right Dark Side esthetic to match the rest of the ensemble.
We used to go all out for Halloween. My wife would decorate the front porch with cobwebs, a fog machine and 6-foot witch that would cackle maniacally when kids approached the door. We sent more than a few snot-nosed Disney princesses and pint-sized Ninja Turtles running back down the driveway in tears to their mommies. You gotta earn that mini Oh Henry!, kid.
Meanwhile, my job was to take the kids around the neighbourhood. Our treeless suburban hellscape may have its drawbacks, but it makes for a compact candy run and my job was essentially to hang on to the bag or bucket once it got too heavy. It got boring fast.
I also wasn’t super impressed with my kids’ costumes in the early years. We opted for warmth over style when they were young — usually fuzzy animal getups that could double as snowsuits in a pinch — they moved on to princesses and vampires and other predictable fare.
As an avid “Star Wars” fan — and I may or may not be wearing a T-shirt emblazoned the tech specs of the Millennium Falcon as I write this — I used the Jedi mind trick to convince my little ones that dressing up as, say, Chewbacca, was the coolest thing ever. Me volunteering to dress up as best movie villain in history was just a way to seal the deal.
And so they went as Leia, Chewy and C3P0, accompanied by Paunchy Vader Dad. The pinnacle came about five years ago when my youngest daughter and I dressed up as Big Darth and Little Darth, leading to an endless string of “I am your father” jokes. Actually, that was every year. Eventually though, Vader Dad lost his cool factor. My kids started trick-or-treating with their friends and then stopped going at all. My wife decided that keeping a 6-foot witch and a fog machine in the storage era 364 days a year wasn’t a particularly good use of space. Plus, it scared the crap out of me every time I went to restock the toilet paper.
I can’t quite part with the Vader getup, though: you never know when there might be a sequel. Or just an unreasonable tall kid with a beer gut trick-ortreating with the dark side of the Force.
Drew Edwards wanted to be Han Solo growing up. He can be reached at drew@drewedwards.ca.