Ten reasons to be thankful for Star Wars

Thanks to Star Wars, we got a million sci-fi rip-offs, some of which were good and some of which were Flash Gordon.

Thanks to Star Wars, we’ve all secretly tried to use the Jedi Mind Trick to get out of traffic tickets and move coffee mugs using the Force. I swear I made a pen wobble once.

Thanks to Star Wars, America wins the best missile defense name contest, beating out France’s Toulouse-Loutrec Missile Defense System (where the rockets, you know, just fall short) and Canada’s Maurice “The Rocket” Richard Defense System (where the rockets just go to Tim Horton’s and order a small coffee).

Thanks to Star Wars, writers everywhere learned that even if Steven Spielberg is your best friend and you shed thousand dollar bills the way other humans shed dead skin cells, God in the form of Roger Ebert will still punish you for writing a character like Jar Jar Binks.

Thanks to Star Wars, Joseph Campbell sold a few million more books and earned ten solid years of nerd fame (“Bill Moyers loves me!”) before going to the Great Archetypal Beyond.

Thanks to Star Wars, millions of Americans have a tight-pant-wearing Harrison Ford and a metal-bikini-wearing Carrie Fisher to thank for jumpstarting their collective puberties.

Thanks to Star Wars, the world has lots and lots of action figures – all of which eventually get lit on fire by your brother.

Thanks to Star Wars, children everywhere have spent the last 30 years making whooshing noises and clubbing each other with brightly colored sticks. We call these lightsaber battles – and HMOs love them!

Thanks to Star Wars, asthmatics are no longer shunned but rather celebrated for their spot-on Darth Vader impressions. Inhalers be damned.

And finally, thanks to Star Wars, we learned what it meant to fall deeply, madly in love with a movie.