Darth Tollhouse

In the eighth grade, my English teacher got me really into Star Wars. He was a fan and had used it in class to demonstrate plot lines and character development as we prepared for a module that would require us to pen our own short stories.

Mr. Publicover is a visionary educator, one of those instructors who sets expectations high and earns the respect to demand success of his pupils. I, along with hundreds of other students, idolized him for his expertise, his quick wit, and his ability truly to understand his students and engage them on a deeply personal level. Mr. Publicover lent me his boxed set of the Star Wars trilogy for the weekend and, recognizing my limited attention span, suggested I make some cookies while I watched it to pass the time.

I look back on that rainy weekend amused and nostalgic. I ran between the kitchen and the family room, emotionally engaged in the outlandish escapades of Luke and his comrades, pressing pause to measure out my very first cups of flour and sugar, much to my parents’ raised eyebrows.

Star Wars (the original trilogy, mind you; not the dismaying set of vapid prequel cash-cows that George Lucas turned out in recent years) and cookies are an incredible combination. There is something so wholesome about both. Baking in general makes a person feel very domestic and connected to the apple-pie Americana that embodies our idea of tradition. But a cookie! A cookie is a golden ray of gastronomic sunshine, especially on a cold or sad day, when things could stand to be a bit brighter. And Star Wars, in its simple juxtaposition of good and evil, its sensitive messaging of the interconnectivity of all life, and its profound statement of hope, is a rare moment of cinematic magic. I returned the trilogy to Mr. Publicover the following Monday with a dozen of my first batch of cookies.

Swiftly thereafter, I bought my own three-tape set, and that first weekend repeated itself frequently. With time, it became a social gathering of sorts for my friends from school, and a decade later, this same group that gathered around my cookie sheets are the ones with whom I am in touch, who are my friends, and whom I love. It is hard to say which played the most important role in those weekends, the cookies or the movies, for as much as a cookie is irresistible, Star Wars speaks to multiple generations on what it means to create and to destroy, to love and to hate, and how acts of kindness and bravery make history. Even Mr. Publicover would have trouble teaching eighth-graders lessons like those on his own.

Today, I have my cookie recipe perfected and can recite most of the trilogy’s nine hours from memory. And I invite people over whenever I make cookies because, thanks to Star Wars, cookies are my way to share love and kindness and to build the bonds of my community.

-- Nathan