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Owen Lars' List Of How To Discourage A Cheap Farmhand From Leaving Home And Joining The Imperial Space Academy
A few years ago, on a sandplanet not so far away, I started writing down all the more or less sorry excuses my Uncle Owen-may the Force Bless his soul- came up with to prevent me from leaving the farm and joining the Imperal Space Academy. Rummaging through my few belongings, I just found the list again; which I'm going to share with you now.
Luke Skywalker: "I want to go to the Academy..."
Owen Lars: Do you think they run a kindergarten?
Last heard when I was about 16!.
Do you think they have uniforms that have run in during the last wash?
In other words: You're too short/scrawny to be a space warrior.
You'll be the first cadet to spend his off-time playing with model spaceships.
Deftly implying that I, up to that date, was still in 'mint condtion'( i.e. unused-more or less)
and by no means prepared for the hard facts of life as a full-time warrior.
Are you aware that the medical exams for recruits include about 6 to 10 shots?
I HATED him for that remark. It gave me the creeps.
Do you think they'll take someone who believes a 'Black Sith' is the newest model of landspeeder?
Or, invariably:
Do you think they'll take someone who writes "Vader" with an 'F'?
Ok, ok- so my school grades could have been a bit better. But did he have to put it so bluntly?
Are we having delusions of grandeur gain, 'Admiral Skywalker'?
Well, Uncle-there's not much grandeur in being a sandfarmer, right?
Are you going to take 'Munkie',(my stuffed toy-friend from childhood days)along for support?
Just because I kept 'Munkie' sitting on my bed, for old times sake.
Do you think they'll take a kid still needing both hands to pee into a bucket?
Uncle was not well informed in this case. I'm right on target using only my left.
Big plans for someone who can't even fly a Skyhopper without banging it up!
No comment!
Do you expect your Aunt to repair the vaporators?
Run of the mill remark throughout my stay at the farm; trying to arouse guilty feelings in me.
Harvest is when I need you most!
Another one of those 'Can't you see how desperate I am, boy?' lines. Overused.
If I hear either this," What about my father?", or the " I want to join the Academy." bit once more, I'll send you streetwalking in Mos Eisley!
This was the last warning, before Uncle Owen would turn to a more physical way of expressing himself.
You don't take' No' for an answer, do you?
Just another one of his threatening questions; usually accompanied by a steel-eyed grim glower.
Yeah, sure, THAT, and a pious man from Corellia.
A line I never quite understood-until I met a certain someone.
You can go to the Academy after the harvest.
Trouble is, he always forgot to say which year.
How are you going to get there? On foot?
In other words: I, Owen Lars, am not going to pay for the expenses of your trip, Luke.
You are starting to sound like Siskhan Bethell!
For those of you unfamiliar with local politics: Siskhan Bethell was the vice-president of Mantooine, and widely known for repeating himself and stubbornly clinging to his pet projects and peeves.
I'm starting to wish your old man had been Cawris Renian.
Cawris Renian was a well-reknowned maker of heavy duty agricultural droids. Uncle Owen obviously wished I were a diligently laboring mechanical slave, content with doing his duty on a farm.
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