Lost in Darth Vader’s head

Darkness is starting to set in, and we’re lost in the mind of a madman. We no longer hear the voices of others. We hear only the sound of our own feet clumping through the mud somewhere — by my reckoning — in the region of Darth Vader’s frontal lobe.

We’re in a corn maze, my boy and I, probably the size of about two acres. The maze is carved out to look like Darth Vader’s helmeted head. We had entered through the esophagus and took a quick right turn toward the cerebellum, perhaps a fatal mistake. We probably should have just stayed straight up the esophagus where free cider doughnuts have been reported.

 “Come on, let’s head along the edge,” I said. “It probably folds back in and accordions its way to the cider doughnuts.”

Assuming Darth Vader’s helmet is a snug fit, 10 minutes into the maze we’re somewhere in the vicinity of his occipital lobe, a part of the brain that processes visual information. This is what we see: Endless corn stalks and, up above, black crows belly laughing. Ten minutes is about all my boy could handle. He wants the cider doughnuts, not a fiendish, claustrophobic aerobic workout. I’m not going to backtrack. No way. You have to earn the doughnut. I imagine that years from now he will remember those words in times of crisis. “My father always said, ‘You have to earn the doughnut.’”

But for now, he’s saying, “Dad, we’re never going to get out of here.”

And thus begins an existential crisis.

"You don't know the power of the dark side," Darth Vader famously said in one of the six Star Wars movies. I’m in Darth Vader’s head, but he’s getting into my head.

We must be nearing a temporal lobe, because I’m feeling compassion for Darth. As a villain, he was way too complicated to pigeonhole, wasn’t he? He surely could understand that things are never totally black or white, good or evil. He was born into slavery to a single mother, from whom he was taken away. He earned the doughnut early on, per se, but it was that uppity Jedi Council — the “good” guys — that refused to harness and cultivate the goodness of this troubled, yet promising, young lad. Don’t be fooled: Yoda was an asshole.

We’re 20 minutes into the maze. We must be in the region of the hypothalamus, which helps control things such as temperature, mood and hunger. I say that because my boy reports he’s freezing, frustrated and starving. We’ve traveled several switchbacks and have come to a dead end. We can hear feint voices somewhere over that way.

“We should have taken the right turn back there,” my boy says.

No one likes a smart aleck.

"I find your lack of faith disturbing," Darth Vader famously said.

We backtrack and enter a new passageway, and the choice is left or right, black or white, wrong or right.

Yes, Darth got dealt a bad hand from day one. Do you recall what finally pushed him to the Dark Side? He saw a vision of his love, Padme, dying. She was the only person in this miserable, far, far away galaxy he felt he could trust. Plus, she was super hot. He loved Padme so much he would do everything he could to save her life. That makes him evil? Are you serious? Maybe Rick Santorum is right about Hollywood being run by godless elitists with no reverence for the family.

We take a right, and it turns out to be wrong: Another dead end. So we head the other way.

Darth’s was of virgin birth. So was he a Jesus figure fallen to temptation? Or does he represent you and me fallen to temptation? That would make sense, but the virgin birth doesn’t match up. Did George Lucas smoke dope?

The sun is going down. Maybe we’re somewhere in the pineal gland, which controls our response to light and dark. My boy’s mood is getting dark. I fear I’m losing his trust. We hit another dead end. It has a cluster of busted pumpkins. Darth Vader must have a brain tumor.

Ultimately, Darth Vader came back to the light when he sacrificed himself to save his son, Luke. We can only be saved by love. This is true. And redemption is available to all, no matter anyone’s past actions. But Darth Vader tried to love, remember? Padme? None of it matches up. No wonder he was a head case. Ah, forget it! Inside the dead ends of Darth Vader’s mind, I take matters into my own hands. I pick up my boy, and we plunge through the wall of corn stalks — smash, crash —through lobe after mysterious lobe of consciousness and stimuli and decision-making. “This is awesome!” my boy exclaims

Through Darth Vader’s skull we go until we tumble into the clearing near a river where we scare the pants off two bird hunters in orange vests. They look at us, startled. We look at them, relieved. They don’t shoot us.

Then we get the heck out of there. We left Darth Vader with doughnuts lodged in his esophagus.