They say April showers bring May flowers, and May the Fourth (followed by Revenge of the Fifth) brings Star Wars week.

I love May the 4th, aka Star Wars Day. I love seeing Star Wars fans new and old celebrating my favorite films of all time. Some long time fans of the franchise look down on people who celebrate May the 4th, preferring to wait until May 25th (the day the film was released in theaters) to celebrate. Some refer to people who dress up on May the 4th as fair weather fans. Star Wars fans are a funny lot who will literally argue with other fans about how they are enjoying Star Wars incorrectly. What a waste of energy.

I spent the weekend prior to May the Fourth moving thirty tubs full of Star Wars collectibles out of our storage unit and into our garage.

When we moved into our new house back in 2018, my Star Wars collection had no place to live. There was no place in the house for it all, and no room for it in the garage will all the other moving boxes. For over a year, I’ve had 30 tubs full of Star Wars collectibles (along with an old Christmas tree, an arcade cabinet, and several other boxes) in storage. Now that the backyard workshop is complete, things are beginning to shift. I’d like to compare the moving of boxes to Tetris, although it feels more like an avalanche at the moment.

Over the weekend, Susan and I made eight separate trips to and from the storage unit, which fortunately is only three miles from our house. For a couple of hours I loaded, transported, unloaded and stacked tubs full of toys. I peeked inside a few of the tubs and I won’t lie, each time I opened one felt a little like Christmas.

When I was a kid, finding some of these same toys and action figures under the tree where Santa had left them, I never imagined owning so many toys would be such a burden. And maybe burden’s not exactly the right word, but I just spent a thousand dollars storing a bunch of toys I haven’t seen in over a year and threw out my back moving them.

I don’t know exactly where in the new house my collection will land. Some of it may end up on display in my office, some will end up out in the theater, and there’s a possibility some of it may get passed on to another collector. It’s a bummer that I haven’t been able to reopen everything yet, but on May the Fourth I was able to share in other’s fandom by viewing the pictures they shared.

May the Fourth be with you all!