20 years ago, when I was 12, I got to skip school and see The Phantom Menace on opening day. That’s the thing I’m in the1% of. I peaked in middle school. (if you’re too young to remember the hype surrounding Episode I check out this video I made about exactly that )

I didn’t have to camp out for tickets or anything, in fact, the neighbor lady who got my ticket didn’t have to wait in line at all. Gayle knew I was obsessed with Star Wars on account of the fact that I would go to their house to see if their Pepsi cans had any of the characters printed on them that I needed to complete my 24 can set. I carpooled with her daughter to school so across her days to drive, Gayle had surely noticed that The Phantom Menace was all I had talked about for months. I could not wait. I had filled multiple VHS tapes with every interview or Entertainment Tonight segment that aired, but I knew that opening weekend tickets just wasn’t in the cards for me. So I assumed.

Gayle came over the day tickets went on sale explained that she had gone to our local theater and upon request, was allowed to go straight in and purchase tickets, bypassing the insane line on account of the fact she needed a cane to walk because she was sick. I was too young to have any idea that this sickness and the headwrap she wore in lieu of hair had anything to do with each other, but when she said that she had got us tickets, I was blown away that such a maneuver had worked. Her, her son, a few of his high-school-aged friends and I were going to see the first showing of the most anticipated movie of all time.*

*by me

May 19th came around and I went over to their house a couple of hours early to hang out with her son and his friends, a bunch of, what I now know were surely dorks, but at the time they were cool as hell to me. We played a comically transparent rip off of street fighter called Battle Arena Toshinden and they marveled at the fact that I still had the original giant gray Gameboy instead of a Gameboy Pocket or color. I played it cool, stating I didn’t care, heck this one could fit in my pocket anyway, proving it to them as I explained as much. Almost immediately my jean shorts fell down under the weight of the Gameboy and its four AA batteries.

I rode with Gayle to the theater in elated silence. Only speaking when she asked if I minded if she smoked, which I didn’t on account of the fact that I was 12 and what was I gonna do, tell a grown woman “yes I mind?” Outside the theater, we met up with another party from her son’s school. One was a really friendly (even to me) goth girl who had brought along a Jar-Jar action figure. She let me check it out for a little bit which was awesome because I had never seen one before. I had my share of Episode I toys but until anyone had actually seen the film, the assumption was that Jar-Jar was gonna be pretty rad and toy stores didn’t tend to have him in stock. I had drawn oil pastel pictures of him and Darth Maul to hang in my room as consolation for not having them in action figure form.

What’s hilarious to me looking back is how much of a formality actually seeing the movie was. The lengths we go to avoid spoilers is in such stark contrast to back then when months before the film came out I had the soundtrack with a piece titled “Qui-Gon’s noble end” and knew the plot beat for beat from the junior novelization. This must be why I don’t really remember much about actually watching The Phantom Menace that day. I know I got movie theater nachos for the first time because well, I was celebrating. I got chills when Anakin got his Pod Racer running and yelled out “It’s working, it’s working!” I know this because to this day, it’s still the one part of the movie that works for me on a visceral level and delivers on the promise of the fantastical escapism that is the Star Wars universe. After the screening, I must have floated home, dazed in a Spike Lee dolly shot because I couldn’t tell you a single detail of the rest of the day.

My takeaway for a long time was how lucky I was to be able to see The Phantom Menace on opening day, even as I grew up to realize the movie kind of sucks. And then especially as I grew up to realize that it was her fight with breast cancer that left Gayle in no condition to stand in line to get movie tickets for her son, his friends and the weird kid who checked their recycling bin for soda cans with characters on them. She did beat it but unfortunately, she was later diagnosed with brain cancer and opted not to undergo treatment.

I won’t lie and pretend Gayle and I had some kind of Daniel/Mr. Miyagi relationship. She was the kind of crazy that’s usually funny but just a bit too intense for an insecure kid who still wasn’t even dreaming up good comebacks later in the shower, much less keeping up with the chain-smoking, world-weary lady from down the street. She passed away a few years later and I’ll admit that this is essentially the only story about her that I can recall with any real vividness.

For a long time, I felt guilty that she only stuck out in my memory because of the time she intersected with my childhood obsession with Star Wars. But looking back twenty years later, I see that what I thought was the picture was just the frame. I had a fun, weird, and beautifully simple day when I was guileless enough to think that Star Wars was the whole point and in that sense, I get to appreciate it all over again with the benefit of maturity.

When we have a deep affection for films that we secretly know aren’t very good, it’s almost always really about the deeply personal ethereality surrounding the experience of seeing the movie. My takeaway is still how lucky I am that I got to see The Phantom Menace opening day, not because I’m glad I saw the movie, but because it’s the time my childhood obsession with Star Wars intersected with the crazy lady down the street and gave me a story about her I can recall with real vividness even twenty years later. Who were you with when you saw Episode I?