the jedi mind trick

This morning after breakfast, the boys wanted to watch a Thomas the Train movie while I cleaned up. So after all the previews at the beginning, it finally got to the screen to push play and start the movie. Dylan went to the DVD player to push play, but he didn't know I already had the remote control in the kitchen. I beat him to the punch, and hit start just before he pushed the button. "Wow, that was pretty cool!" he said. Jedi Mind Trick, I said to him.

This totally made me remember a funny story from last summer that I don't think I ever shared here. A video clip of this would do it much more justice, but bear with me..

Dylan, like most boys his age, loves Star Wars. Last summer at the lake house, we played a great trick on him. One of the toys there is a fake log, and on the log are things to shoot at - some fake bottles, etc. It comes with a gun and there is a mechanism that allows you to 'shoot' each item off the log (it just falls over backwards) and makes a pistol shooting noise.

Completely by accident one day, we discovered the TV remote control activates the mechanism in the log toy that makes the shooting sound and caused the bottles to fall off, one by one. I think Andrew went to change the channel and somewhere in another part of the room we heard the log going off, and we were the only people in the room. The Jedi Mind Trick was born.

When Dylan came inside, we told him to stand in front of the log and close his eyes, focus really hard and use the Jedi Mind Trick to envision the bottles flying everywhere. Pow! Pow! Pow! When he had his eyes closed, we pressed the remote control buttons and bottles were flying off that thing like it was a total shoot out. Dylan opened his eyes, completely convinved he had tapped into some special Jedi forces in his brain. Oh how I wish I had video taped this. It was totally hilarious every single time we did it. The trick worked on my stepsisters' son Trent, too. We went on all week, the boys showing every new person arrived at the lake house their Jedi Mind Trick. We never told them the truth.

I wonder if this summer, we'll be to pull it off again or if they'll be onto us this time?