This is going to be difficult to explain. In fact, I rather suspect I lack the words necessary to really convey the point of what I’m talking about, but a lack of skills has never stopped me before.

Recently my DVD player gave up the ghost. I don’t mean it’s just acting temperamental, I mean it has thoroughly conked out. It’s dead. It also managed to die with a DVD stuck in it, so I had to take the goddamn thing apart just to liberate my Casablanca supplemental features disc.

Then, literally mere seconds after I finished working on that infernal machine, my receiver for my surround sound set-up utterly shit the bed. My auxiliary DVD player, the one that was built into the receiver, had always been rather fussy, but the machine worked just fine in terms of making the surround sound go. But the whole thing just died right after the DVD player did. Maybe it was too sad about its loss, like the dog at the end of Where the Red Fern Grows.

Whatever the case, I was, as they say, one pissed off honky. All the old cliches applied: it never rains, but it pours; if it’s not one thing, it’s another; when one home appliance explodes, another can’t be far behind.

I then engaged in one of my favorite activities: sitting with my arms crossed, complaining and pouting.

But eventually it came time for me to watch a movie or go nuts, so I pulled out my old VHS copies of the Star Wars trilogy and popped in Return of the Jedi.

Now, Return of the Jedi is a movie I’ve watched many times in my life. I’ve watched it many times in my adult life. It’s not like it’s some long-ago, half-forgotten memory of something I loved in my youth. I have Return of the Jedi on DVD and I watch it all the time. If you call my cell phone and leave a voicemail, my outgoing message is just me repeating dialogue from this movie.

Yet, somehow, watching this VHS copy not only instantly chased my grouchiness away it made me feel like a kid again. Even though I see the movie all the time, seeing it panned-and-scanned and looking a little grainier somehow made all the difference.

And it wasn’t just about remembering those younger days. It’s like I was that kid, transported back in time or something, sitting on the living room floor with a bowl of cereal and watching Return of the Jedi, still young and silly enough to think it was the best movie of the three.

I thrilled as Luke sprang off that plank above the Great Pit of Carkoon, my eyes got glassy and wet when Yoda died, I leapt up and cheered when the Death Star exploded. (And about that: where is the glory for Wedge Antilles? He’s the one who had to hit the difficult target. The Millennium Falcon’s target was huge and impossible to miss, but you know Lando was getting all the glory down at that Yub-Nub party on Endor.)

I was right, I can’t explain it. For whatever reason, watching a different copy of a movie I see all the time managed to make me forget every single annoyance, every grievance, every unpleasant turn my life has ever taken and plant me squarely in the deliriously happy mindset of a Star Wars obsessed kid. And even once the movie ended, I still felt good. Better than I had in a long time, in fact.

Thanks a bundle, Return of the Jedi. Now I owe you one.

Oh, hey! Speaking of Star Wars on VHS, remember this awesome ad? I know I do!

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• Star Wars Memories, Vol. 1
• Empire Magazine Couldn’t Be More Wrong
• The Spirit of Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Jerk
• Ninja Turtles in 2011!
• Bea Arthur Died and That is Bullshit