What a good neighbor I am....

A few weeks ago one of my neighbors approached me with an idea of how I could help her with the upcoming birthday party for here 8 year old son. She said her son wanted to have a Star Wars themed birthday party. She thought that it would be a great idea to have Darth Vader show up at the party. I happily agreed because I was more than willing to dress up as a character to make the party special for her son.


The few weeks leading up to the party I did not think much about the event. I imagined that there would be a a handful of boys that would be awe-struck at seeing Darth Vader at the party. I would have a few playful sword fights with the boys and then they would get their pictures taken with me.

The day of the party I started to put the costume together. I had a black cape with a hood. I put on my black dress pants and a black long sleeved turtle neck shirt. I found my black leather winter gloves and with the darth vader mask I borrowed, the ensemble was complete. See picture below.

Before I left for the party I did a little goofing around in it to see how well I was going to do in it. I noticed that the tinted grey plastic eyes that I was using to see through were getting fogged up pretty easily. But I figured with the air outside it wouldn't be so bad.

I arrived at the party about 10 minutes early so that I could coordinate my entrance. Everyone was out in the back yard so I went through the garage into the kitchen. I waited for a minute and the mom came in from the outside. She said "you can go out whenever you are ready." I was imagining some loud music, maybe some smoke and perhaps a strobe light. Nope, it was just me walking out the back sliding glass door and walking down the steps into the back yard.

Just before I went outside I was able to see what was going on outside in the backyard. There were no less than 15 boys all running around pummeling each other with make shift light sabers. The light sabers were a three foot piece of the foam water noodles you can get at Wal-Mart for $0.99. The handle was some duct tape wrapped around one end.

So there I was standing at the bottom of the stairs in my full Darth Vader outfit. Thinking to myself "These kids are going to be in total awe when they see who came to their party" Yea, it was nothing like that. As soon as enough of them noticed that Darth Vader was standing in the back yard, they formed a makeshift posse and all yelled "Get Darth Vader" as they all ran at me with their play light sabers.

The fight was on! I stepped onto the grass and 7 of them were on me lionesses going after their afternoon meal. I managed to hold off the first wave of the terrorist with a combination of sword play and a technique I like to call "grab their sword and throw it across the yard".

At that point several of the more bold kids had dropped their swords and were just trying to wrestle me to the ground. Much like Jim Brown used to do, I resorted to stiff arming and throwing them to the ground in order to keep them from tearing the mask off my head. After a few of them realized I was big and strong and tougher than they imagined, they abandoned that effort.

I began to realize that not only were the afore mentioned glassy eye holes fogged up, they were covered in sweat. When I say sweat I don't mean a little sweat on your brow. I am talking, its 70 degrees outside, I have a plastic mask on my head with little circulation, I am wearing a black turtle neck long sleeved shirt, and I am having to fend off attackers like a scene from the Matrix when Neo is fighting hundreds of Agent Smith's.

I take my first break to go inside and dry off the eye holes so I can see to defend myself. When I take off the mask and start drying my face I realize that the towel gets so wet I have to wring it out. I was sweating THAT MUCH.

When I went out this time, I thought of a new strategy. I told the boys that everyone with the same color light saber I had, was on my team. This worked beautifully. I took about a third of the boys out of the enemy pool and turned them against the other kids.

All in all it was a big success. The boys liked that I was in there swinging with them. The mom was grateful and said that I probably saved her $500.00 from having to have someone come to the party dressed like I did.