Lightsabers Are My Childhood
How four friends used Star Wars technology to make their escape from Calaveras County
On my desk, among the countless anime figures and comic-book memorabilia, resides a small shrine dedicated to Star Wars collectibles — collectibles that freeze a moment in my life and somehow render it back to me in fresh, living detail. There are two lightsaber replicas within that ensemble; one is an unlicensed original containing spectacular sentimental value, and the other is a souvenir from Disneyland. Unless you are well versed in lightsaber culture, it is unlikely that you could tell one from the other. The lightsaber with the short hilt is immaculate and decorated with perfect rivets, painted on exposed wires and a simple leather band wrapped around the sliding power switch. Those in the know would recognize this as the Skywalker saber wielded by Rey in the sequel trilogy. It is perfect in every way and is as common as the air we breathe. The longer of the two sports an exposed motherboard with circular ribs that ascend the top of the hilt and is rivetingly rare and no longer in production. This lightsaber is a brilliant mash-up of the weapons of two of the greatest Jedi known to fans: Luke Skywalker and Obi-wan Kenobi. Parks sabers are unique because they created lightsabers that exist only in the imagination. Like the master replicas of today, they light up and make all the glorious albeit annoying sounds that we could only mimic with our mouths. Unlike its Disney cousin, the components of this Parks saber are not simply painted on. You can touch the exposed mechanics and truly feel immersed in the universe.
Though it may not look special to the untrained eye, this lightsaber captivated me throughout my high school years. I first saw this lightsaber in my friend’s bedroom in the fall of 2005. Spencer had just purchased this beauty for around three hundred bucks — three hundred was the same as a million to me — and invited me and our two mutual friends, Joey, and Casey, over for the grand unveiling. We were all around seventeen, and we were neck-deep in puberty. The overall vibe was akin to four friends staring at a dirty magazine. There was something forbidden about it and strangely erotic. I remember standing in the room with everyone. We were breathing hard, and our hearts were racing as Spencer slowly peeled the plastic from the hilt. I’m not ashamed to say that there was drool involved, and a significant fraction was from myself. There was a fair amount of jealousy in the room: all of us were extreme fans of the Star Wars world, but only one of us could afford a piece of it. You might think this would create animosity between us, but instead, it brought us closer together. Sure, only one of us owned a lightsaber, but the love for it was shared by all.
There was a simple reason for our joyful, semi-erotic awe at what was, after all, the mere hilt of an imaginary plasma sword: we lived in Calaveras County in the northern foothills of California. Calaveras County is over one thousand square miles of nothing but kindle and flint sprinkled with a ‘large’ population of over forty-five thousand. Popular hobbies of the inhabitants include but are not limited to: making meth, starting fires, or the exhilarating, anxiety-inducing, physically demanding sport of jumping frogs. If these weren’t reasons enough, each of us was seeking sanctuary from abusive households. We bonded over trauma and nerd culture alike, and Star Wars was the one world we all wanted to escape to. The first time I wielded a lightsaber, it had the same weight for me as if I’d been holding a gun. It seems silly in hindsight, but that hilt made me feel powerful. Lightsabers stood out in my mental cache of sci-fi and fantastical weaponry — uniquely protective and destructive at once. They can block lasers and turn solid metal into heaps of molten muck. As with a firearm, very little can stand up to the destructive force of a lightsaber. Fortunately for us, these replicas were not as potent. Instead of missing limbs, we had impact wounds and nasty bruises. While spending much of our time in imaginary duels, we also used our item of worship to imagine a world outside our monotonous and painful lives, one that took us to “a galaxy far, far away.” Each of us yearned to work in the entertainment industry, and we hoped such work would be the key to happier lives.
Spencer was the aspiring director; I was his writer and fill-in actor: and Joey and Casey took on the leading roles. Our works included such blockbusting titles as Improv Wars and Improv Wars II: The Long-Awaited Sequel. The movies were parodies of the Star Wars franchise and had us working together constantly. Most of our lines were improvised, but we took what lines we found funny or integral to the plot and created scripts for both films. We spent countless hours working on our choreography with that lightsaber as our star actor. One scene required me to jump from a moving quad and roll down a gravel hill with the Obi-Luke saber secured to my belt. Upon landing, I immediately began an epic duel against our current Sith Lord, played by Joey. This scene alone took over a month to perfect and left me covered in cuts and bruises, and it was not the only scene that demanded blood. However, this kind of work knitted us together. Our friendship was quickly growing into a brotherhood. Spencer would purchase other Park Sabers for our films, but the Obi-Luke saber was always utilized. It took on scratches and dents as we collected scars. Those scratches and dents were like initials carved into a tree or like the very scars we gave one another- testaments to a collective friendship.
Then, in 2010, that friendship fractured: the four of us went our separate ways. We were growing up, and life was affecting each of us. Spencer and I each had fiancés. Joey had his first child, and Casey moved across the state for work. We got into a fight over who would be the best man at our separate weddings. I chose Joey, and Spencer decided — despite initially promising the role of best man to me — to give the honor to a friend none of us had heard of. I wouldn’t talk to Spencer again for over a decade. Out of inexperience, I treated our friendship as a trivial thing and stupidly decided that it was better to let it end rather than work through what was wrong. Unfortunately, he agreed with me at the time. Over the years, he tried to reach out several times, but I always ignored him; I was too arrogant to respond. Eleven years after the initial break, I finally decided to pick up the phone. Our conversation was surprisingly fluid for how long it had been. We spoke in our group’s universal language of inside jokes and coded words; we spoke about everything as if we were desperate to fit the last eleven years into one conversation.
Within those eleven years, we had developed families. I now have a wife and two children, and he has a wife and dog. He joined the army, and I pursued school. Both of us have lives that our younger selves would not have recognized. During the conversation, Spencer asked me for my address, adding that he wanted to send me a care package. I found the question a bit abrupt — but who was I to refuse a generous gesture after all this time? A few weeks after catching up, I received the care package. It came in a larger box than I was expecting. Honestly, I was expecting a large manilla envelope filled with pictures and small knickknacks. As I opened the package and tore through the bubble wrap, I was met with flashbacks of our childhood. There were stickers and patches from the dojo he had started, and underneath, wrapped tightly, was an object I did not recognize at first. As I removed layers of bubble wrap, I saw that it was the Obi-Luke Park saber, and was transported back to high school. The memories of our antics and the four of us flooded my mind, and I cried. Yet it wasn’t the intense feelings of nostalgia that had touched off my tears; it was my realization of the time I had lost with one of my closest friends. All due to my stubborn nature. I’d had multiple opportunities to course-correct, and had ignored them all. Later that week, I called Spencer and asked him why he’d sent me the lightsaber. I was stunned by his answer: “Every time I would see this lightsaber, I thought of you. And every time, I was reminded of what I had lost.
Now that we’re friends again, I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more.” I cherish it even more because of those words. Every time I look at it, I’m reminded not just of the precious memories of our collective past, but of Spencer’s generosity too. The excitement I felt when I first glimpsed this lightsaber is still there, though now tinged with some bittersweetness too. Instead of an object of silly teenage worship, it has now become an icon representing a group of four friends who could not imagine a life without one another. Three of the four of us still keep in contact: Joey, Spencer, and I have a Zoom call at least once a month to relive our childhood and provide each other with commentary on the new state of the Star Wars franchise. The Parks Saber is often the central topic, always leading us back to our childhood endeavors. Most importantly, it reminds me that, while some memories can be frozen in time, sometimes — like Han in carbonite — they need to be defrosted and given a new life. I will always cherish the memories I had with this saber, but I am more excited to experience the memories it will hold in the future.
