My friend Anne recently passed on the above Volkswagen video, created by Craig Melchiano and David Povill, which involves a kid dressed up as Darth Vader trying to use the force. It's pretty funny and it reminded me of this game we did two years ago at my son's 5th birthday party.

Specifically, it was a Star Wars themed birthday party, which we foolishly held in our house (also, if you can believe it, Kate made a Jedi robe for every kid!). What we did was modify the game, "pass the parcel." We had saw online that there were Star Wars versions of this, which primarily involved wrapping something up like a ball, and calling it a Death Star.

However, we thought that it would be way more fun if we could convince the kids that if they used the "force" they could get the stereo to stop the music (and therefore entitling them to the act of unwrapping). This, of course, is easy to do since pretty much every stereo these days comes with a remote. Note that, obviously, the Star Wars theme was the music being played during the game.

I tell you: it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen – here you have a group of 5 year olds "concentrating" so hard, and doing the classic Jedi hand gesture at the stereo trying to make the music stop. For a Star Wars fan like myself, it was a brilliant sight to see. And just so that everyone had a chance to do it, we would also consistently get them to use the "force" all together to start the music up again ("On the count of 3: one… two… three!!).

I should note that if you plan on doing this, be prepared to get a few phone calls from parents. After our party, we had quite a few of them calling, saying that their children were now trying to make their stereos, televisions, and other assorted appliances turn on by sheer will of thought. Anyway, it might be just me, but I thought this was both charming and hilarious.