It was early morning and the sun had yet to kick off it's nightly quilt. The birds sat in their trees waiting for someone to make a sound and the street on which this plan four bedroom house stood was quiet and still. A scruffy twelve year old boy sneaks into the living room, his mission was to turn the somewhat out dated television set on without waking his hard working parents. The boys rather large uncle slept loudly on the couch and so he knew that he had to be careful not to wake him too. The reason this young man wanted to turn on the tube was because he wanted to try and catch some of the news coverages beaming in from the Olympics that was currently on in Montreal, Canada. The year was 1976 and a delicate Romania gymnast named Nadia Kommenich had just scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic competition. The boy smiled as this elven beauty took to the uneven bars and then the pommel horse and onto her floor routine. At the close of the meet she was awarded with a total of seven perfect 10's. She won the gold medal and captured not only the hearts of the world, but also the heart of an impressionable 12 year old polynesian boy.
As the glow of the television faded the boy wore a great smile because now he had a damsel to rescue from the dragons of the world. He could put a face to the woman that he would one day sacrifice his career for. This Nadia Kommenich didn't even know that he exsisted, but for him that was okay because she was still his girl. The fact that she was an Olympic gold medal gymnast and he swung on the clothes line. The fact that she was fourteen and Romanian, didn't speak a word of english and probably didn't even know where New Zealand was, didn't put him off because she was his first true love. That's if you discounted Laurie Partridge from the Partridge family. Remember she played keyboards. It was a television show, so she doesn't count.
The boy stood from his crouched position. He smiled and waved at a crowd of thousands who stood just inside the boys mind,( they were sheltering from reality). He imagined himself performing in front of so many people. He approached the dinning room table and delicately pulled out two of the chairs. He turned them around so that the seat backs were facing each other and they were shoulder width apart. He placed his hands up onto the backs of the chairs, took a deep breath and with the ease that comes from no formal training and from wearing oversized hand-me-down pajamas that were his older sisters, the pulled his feet off the ground and began his Olympic routine. Which hopefully consisited of just swinging backwards and forwards.
As his confidence grew, so did his altitude. His swings became a little more adventurous and he remembered to point his toes as he pushed for that perfect score. He was hoping to win over the Chinese jugdge as well as the judge from the Ukraine. Just then the boy was snapped back to reality when he realised that the chairs on which he was swinging on were moving. No, they began to dance, in a skipping like fashion. He also realised that he was some distance from the dinning table and his grumpy old uncle, who looked like a beached whale with a bad goatie, was looming very quickly off the starboard bow. He thought to himself," What would Nadia do in this situation?'. It was only then that he felt the soft underbelly that made up the majority of his sleeping uncle. Try as he might to miss this traffic islander, his sleeping relations' stomach was acting like a mini tramp, catapulting the boy away from him only to have him spring back in rubber band like fashion. To make matters worse his arms where now tiring fast and it was at that moment of dispair that a brilliant idea sprung to mind. He remembered how his beloved Nadia dismounted off the unparrallel bars. She seem to just lift one leg and straddle off. It would be like jumping a low fence. Just put you hand on the fence and kick one leg over and let the other one follow. what a brilliant scheme and hopefull the Chinese judge would appreciate the dismount and award him accordingly. Sweat began to smoother his face. The crowds and stadium slowly disappeared and it was replaced by his snoring uncle and 3D pictures of Jesus Christ that belong to his mother. If you looked at the pictures very carefully, Jesus's eyes followed you everywhere.
Now with his escape plan fully in place and under the watchful eyes of our lord and saviour Jesus Christ, the boy began to prepare for his dismount. He pushed off his slumbering Uncle one last time he started to bring his lead leg up for the dismount and right at that very moment the door to kitchen opened and there standing in the door frame, reminisant of the entry made by one Darth Vader in Starwars'," A New Hope", was the FATHER of this SON. The distraction was enough to ruin any chance of a perfect dismount, let alone a perfect score. The boy saw himself falling onto his Uncle, bouncing back up onto the chairs and then crashing into a stack of bibles that were used in regular prayer meetings at the house. He knew, like the people of Alderaan, that he was in wookie dung.
Time passed.....
It was lunchtime and the boy sat at the table in the kitchen nursing his sore ribs and head from the fall on Jabba the Uncle and the stack of chairs and religious artifacts, namely his fathers bibles. He also rubbed his sore butt, which occured when he fell repeatedly onto his father's rather large belt. It was also at this time the boys older brother brought in a library book and put in front of him. The young man stared at the book. It was one of those books you release with a movie to help people understand the picture more and make you want to and see it. This remember was 1976, the idea of marketing books and toys were fairly new. He liked these kinds of books because it was about science fiction and because it had the pictures in the middle and he was able to see who and what would be in this movie. He turned one particular cheese smelling page and there was a picture of slightly built princess, bent over talking to a blue and white rocket nose cone with lights and as soon as he saw this vision in white he realised that she reminded him of his beloved Nadia Kommenich. Apart from the donuts on her head and the white," I dream of Jeannie outfit", she was his Nadia and she looked like she needed someone to rescue her.
The boy quickly limped off to his room to begin the task of reading the book and planning a rescue mission. It was a painful start to journey that would evenually lead him to protecting not this young princess. but her mother. TO BE CONTINUED.

May the force be with you.