Varsity Lunch With a Star

Since Luke was out of school today (his school is a voting venue), we met DH at The Varsity downtown for lunch. Luke makes the 3rd generation of my family to eat there: Dad and Mom, DH and me, and now Luke. We sat in the back room with all of the windows, facing the interstate so he could watch the cars go by. Afterward, he even got to stay at work with DH while I went home for some conference calls.

As we walked from the ordering counters through most of the dining room, I could hear this ripple run through the other diners, and I couldn't figure out why at first. Then I clearly made out a young voice saying "look at his Buzz Lightyear jacket!" I had to smile; Luke would have had the same reaction if he'd seen it on another child. For the younger kids, I could understand. But it wasn't just the little kids; the high school kids (a bunch of private school students were having lunch there) and several tables of college age kids were also murmuring about it as we walked. One table of college age girls (ages 18-20, if I had to guess) even stopped him to tell him how awesome his jacket was. He turned suddenly shy at all of the attention.

As we sat down, I could not figure out why kids of that age would be so impressed with a 6-year-old's jacket depicting basically a cartoon character. Then it hit me: the original Toy Story came out in 1995. They all grew up on Woody and Buzz back when they were brand new. For the college kids, it may well have been the first movie they saw in the theater. *They* probably grew up playing Toy Story the way *we* grew up playing Star Wars.

Man, I feel old!

Currently feeling: amazed