Something amazing is going to happen. Something out of this world. Something I've dreamed of for ages. Dreamed of for about 29 years to be precise, but it's felt like ages. Care to guess what it is? Nope. Uh uh. No, sorry. Are you kidding? Please. Not that. Not that either. Tired of guessing? I am getting stormtrooper armor this summer!!! So it's only a big deal to me. Once said armor arrives, it's going to be converted to sandtrooper armor. To paraphrase Dieter on Sprockets (SNL? Anyone? Anyone?)- "I'll be as happy as a little girl!"

See, I turned 35 back in February. Old? From a certain point of view maybe. No, it's not a mid-life crisis thing. I'm just at a point in my life where I can actually make this happen. My wife is cool with it. My 5 year old daughter is almost as excited as I am. My son, who's only 9 months old, wants to wait until more information comes in before he formulates an opinion one way or the other. When I first saw ANH at a theater that is now, sadly, a parking lot. The first appearance of the Blockade Runner and the Star Destroyer blew me away. The Rebel troops, the droids, all cool. Then the stormtroopers burst in! Were they robots? Were they people? I didn't care. I wanted that costume! They were too cool! They looked like skeletons, which appealed to me as a 6 year old. Still does. I was a stormtrooper for Halloween when I was 7. The three stormtrooper figures spanning the trilogy (stormtrooper, snowtrooper and biker scout) were among my favorites. The thing that really bugged me though was the fact that they never made a sandtrooper figure. How could this have happened? By far, the coolest trooper around had to wait until 1997 for his own figure. What kind of injustice was this? I mean look at these guys! They have the cool shoulder pauldron, the big freakin' backpack, the BFGs. Their armor was dirty. They'd been there. They'd done it. They looked like they'd been in the middle of some heavy-duty poodoo. They were loaded for wampa. So they had the whole "mind trick" weakness. How many Jedi were they really expecting to run into anyway?

These guys were the $#!+. Kenner made the dewback, yet no sandtrooper. We had the regular old stormie to pop into the lame-o slot in the dewback's dorsal region (that's the back to those of you playing at home). Some of you may even remember the commercial that featured a very young Ricky Schroder ("Look both ways, dewback!"). As many figures as we had back then, it always seemed that the ones we really, REALLY wnated were never made, but I digress...

Obtaining the armor is not something I was going to just up and do without consulting the missus first. We try to keep things 50/50 in our marriage. We consult each other on things. Not so much to ask permission, but to keep each other in the loop. It's been said that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. That may be true, but permission comes a lot quicker than forgiveness. Stormtrooper armor and the subsequent transformation to sandtrooper isn't going to be cheap. Not outlandishly expensive either, but not really something you want to spring on someone unawares. My wife is into scrap booking & stamping. That's her obesession. I know I'd be pretty ticked if she dropped in the neighborhood of a Grand on stamp stuff without giving me a heads up first. Anyway, she's down with it. There are a lot worse things I could drop money on.

I have a few friends who have armor and are members of the 501st. They were thrilled to hear I will soon be joining their ranks. My wife just smiles knowingly and shakes her head. She realizes that her hubby is a 6 year old trapped in an adult body. Granted, I'm a grown-up when I need to be, but I try to give the grown up & child in me equal time to run free.