My Man Card for a Mask: A Darth Vader Story
It has been an interesting three weeks in my house. For nearly 21 days, I have wrangled and wrestled with the internet in an earnest desire to secure a Darth Vader costume for my grandson – a youngster who, for some reason unbeknownst to me, has decided to follow the Dark Side. To each his own.
So anyway, my lovely wife decided to take on the gargantuan task of making him a Darth Vader costume for Christmas. “Not Halloween,” you ask? That’s just how we roll. In our family, holidays are a mishmash of traditions that often resemble a cross between Festivus and Vincent van Gogh’s birthday.
Anyway, after much thought and fortuitous pondering, it occurred to my wife that making a Darth Vader mask would be similar to attempting to scale the Eifel Tower with no safety nets or ropes, all the while singing ‘Frère Jacques’ at the top of her lungs. Not a pretty picture.
Enter me.
As honorable and heroic husbands all over the world are wont to do, I told my lovely wife to “let me handle the mask thing”. I would put on my manliness, watch a YouTube video or three, order some foam, and make a mask myself. “I could do this”, I reasoned. “After all, I once made a paper mâché volcano out of a fondue pot!”
In my own defense, I have to say that no one was disappointed over my chocolate explosion. The only real problem was figuring out how to lick the chocolate off the ceiling. But that’s another story for another post. Back to the Darth Vader mask.
In order to pull off this momentous feat, I knew I would need a few things: the aforementioned foam, a craft knife, a hot glue gun, some scrap paper, a white grease pen, a bit of body filler, some sandpaper, primer, black paint, and the biggest first aid kid I could find. While I was at it, I decided to throw in a new boat and that set of golf clubs I’ve had my eye on. But lo and behold, my wife got her eyes on my shopping list. You know the rest of that story.
Someone, Please Sell Me a Mask
So here I am, unable to buy my craft supplies and watercraft, trying to figure out how I am going to save face by delivering a Darth Vader mask in time for the holidays. I went back to the internet, from whence I had found so many plans for Making Your Own Darth Vader Mask Without Even Trying, in search of someone who would sell me said mask.
Mind you, Halloween was just weeks away when I began this endeavor. Who has a spare Darth Vader mask lying around on the second week of October? Nobody willing to sell it for less than $25,000, I’ll tell you that right now. But I did find a few semi-complete Darth Vader Halloween costumes for significantly less.
I thought I had finally hit on the solution. I would save the day by ordering both a costume and mask simultaneously! May the Force be with me! There was only one problem: dozens of available costumes and not a single mask among them. Really? Seriously?
Costumes sans masks don’t work for me. But I guess that’s why eBay had them all on sale for next to nothing. Serves me right for having to step in and solve my wife’s problems. So anyway, my search for a mask proved more difficult than I had imagined.
My solution was to watch all 11 Star Wars movies in hopes that the spirit of all the Jedi would live in me. I was worried, at least for a little bit, that they wouldn’t have enough room. My worries were all for nothing inasmuch as they delivered. I found a mask for next to nothing – and got free shipping to boot! So now I have a complete costume with the mask for my grandson’s Christmas present.
I also got my man card back. Yay me!
