Help Me Obi-Mom: Ask the Motherboard

By Rachel

Pink Raygun’s Resident Geek Mama

We here at Pink Raygun would like to turn this Obi-Mom column into a weekly sort of “Dear Abby” thing (or as I like to call it: a Motherboard). So – if you have any questions about anything geek-mom related, ask away. You can even ask me anything simply geek-related, really. We’ll be setting up an email address in the future to send the questions to, but for now just post them as comments below. I’ll get to as many as I can and hopefully I will not be too snarky in my replies.

As for this week, I thought I’d share with you a strange conversation I had with my three-year-old son yesterday. We are in the process of moving from one state to another and have been trying to help him understand the concept. All week he has been asking me about where people live. Leave it to him to turn a conversation about the Death Star into an iron-clad excuse to not eat his vegetables. His powers of logic stupefy me. It went a little something like this:

Kid: Mommy – where do Darth Vader live?
Mommy: He lives on the Death Star.
Kid: Oh, right.
<pause>
Mommy – what Death Star do? [Translation: this is his way of asking what something is.]
Mommy: It is a big spaceship.
Kid: In space.
Mommy: Yes, in space.
Kid: Oh, right.
<pause>
Mommy – what do Darth Vader eat?
Mommy: Oh, he likes foods like vegetables and juice and sandwiches.
Kid: Does he like candy?
Mommy: I’m sure he does, but he likes to eat vegetables first.
Kid: The yucky stuff?
Mommy: Only you think its yucky stuff.
Kid: Oh, right.
<pause>
Mommy – does Darth Vader have a mommy?
Mommy: Yes.
Kid: Where do she live?
Mommy: Uh…um… on the Death Star, too. [I'll explain that one later.]
Kid: What do she eat?
Mommy: The same kind of stuff Darth Vader eats.
Kid: The yucky stuff?
Mommy: Only you think its yucky stuff.
Kid: Oh, right.
<pause>
Mommy – if I eat the yucky stuff, can I be big like Darth Vader?
Mommy: Sure! Yes! Of course!
Kid: Oh, right.
<pause>
Mommy – I want to go there.
Mommy: Where?
Kid: The Death Star.
Mommy: Why?
Kid: To have dinner with Darth Vader and his mommy.
Mommy: Sweetheart, it’s not real. It’s pretend. Remember? We talked about this.
Kid: Oh, right.
<pause>
Mommy – that mean I don’t have to eat the yucky stuff ‘cause Darth Vader isn’t real.

Thanks a lot, Darth Vader. Thanks a lot.

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Rachel Bishop, originally from Oregon and currently living in Arizona, is a grant writer and consultant for non-profit arts organizations. She hopes to one day renovate an old theatre somewhere and turn it into an art house cinema joint [anyone want to be an investor?]. Rachel has a BA in Theatre and Media Arts and an MFA in Arts Administration. She enjoys movies, writing, photography, chocolate milkshakes, using her label-maker, guacamole, and the Oxford Comma. She has been married for almost seven years to a self- proclaimed Zombie Cinema expert who enjoys the occasional Lego, and is the mother of a 3-year-old Star-Wars freak and a cute little girly-girl who joined the family in January. By the way, it turned out much better for her than it did for Ripley.

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