{"id":211,"date":"2003-02-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-02-02T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/2003\/02\/02\/genetic-obsessions\/"},"modified":"2003-02-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-02-02T07:00:00","slug":"genetic-obsessions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/2003\/02\/02\/genetic-obsessions\/","title":{"rendered":"Genetic Obsessions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was somewhat fond of Star Wars<\/em> when I was a kid. I collected cards and action figures. I thought if I could just save up enough money, I could buy the Millennium Falcon<\/em>. Unfortunately, as mentioned elsewhere<\/a>, I was spending every cent I could scrape up seeing the movie over and over. So it’s a bit strange to find Ethan, and to a lesser degree Gerrit, obsessed with Star Wars<\/em> without ever having seen the movie at all.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Is it possible that they could inherit some kind of Star Wars<\/em> gene from me? Or maybe it’s just a testament to the power of merchandising. The boys have light sabers, action figures, and Star Wars<\/em> Lego sets. The catalyst, though, had to have been Ethan watching me play Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast<\/a><\/em> on the computer (which is a great game by the way). He started playing the game himself not long after, which continues to be a source of conflict between Shannon and I that I haven’t stopped him. Something about her six-year-old blasting and slashing bugs her. We tried distracting him with “E” games, but he keeps going back.<\/p>\n

Shannon also goes a little crazy just listening to Ethan rattle on about Star Wars<\/em>. Her eyes glaze over when he starts talking about Kyle and Jan (characters from the game as opposed to the movies). So I was thinking Shannon was beginning to humor their interest when I saw Star Wars<\/em> pillowcases among their bedding one day. It turns out that Ethan and Gerrit had discovered the cases themselves, though, from the bundle my mom had sent me recently to get rid of kid clutter still at her house.<\/p>\n

That’s not to imply that Shannon isn’t a great mom. She just has different strengths. I don’t have a lot of patience to sit down and play a board game with the boys, but she enjoys that. When it’s time for wrestling or building Lego space ships, though, that’s where I come in. It’s nice to be a team.<\/p>\n

And I suppose I might be guilty of some minor<\/em> encouragement to their interest in Star Wars<\/em>. Like the other day when I used some digital imaging skills…<\/p>\n

\"Qui-Gerrit
\nQui-Gerrit Jinn.<\/span>
\nJan. 30, 2003<\/p>\n

\"Ethan-Wan
\nEthan-Wan Kenobi.<\/span>
\nJan. 30, 2003<\/p>\n

So maybe heredity isn’t all to blame. But do we dare let them actually see the movie?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was somewhat fond of Star Wars when I was a kid. I collected cards and action figures. I thought if I could just save up enough money, I could buy the Millennium Falcon. Unfortunately, as mentioned elsewhere, I was spending every cent I could scrape up seeing the movie over and over. So it’s … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Genetic Obsessions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-familynews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1779,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/1779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}