How is it that our favorite characters haven't seemed to age a day - gray hair aside - since we first met them in A New Hope?

* Luke: Jedi or not, those joints have got to be hurting. After taking all the strain of lightsaber training, dogfighting, &c. There's got to be some cracking and popping when he gets out of bed. Yet he's still out there taking long trips in the close confines of an X-wing with the galaxy's finest...

* Han: Still throws the Falcon into every dangerous situation he can manage after being hunted by bounty hunters, swoopies, and god-knows-what-else for years on end. What about arthritis in those hands from being at the controls all the time?

Like I said - graying hair aside, the OT characters are still going strong into their 60s and 70s. Let's not even get me started on Grand-Admiral-Supreme-Mugwump Pellaeon...

How is it that Boba Fett - the man I believe could outlive a cockroach, and is only a year or two older than Han - is the first person to acquiesce to getting old? I'm ill. I think I'm dying.

Of course, Fett's not had the easiest life by a long shot, but neither have any of our heroes if you think about it - in the Rebel Alliance, as a smuggler, later with the reborn Emperor, Thrawn, Yuuzhan Vong, Dark Nest, and the list goes on and on...

Time for a blaze of glory? Or perhaps to break out the Geritol, Depends, and AARP cards...?