"THERE has been an awakening. Have you felt it?" Well, thank you very much for asking - I most certainly have.
I've felt it for around a year, from the moment the first trailer for the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, blasted its way from hyperspace and on to my iPad screen, hitting me between the eyes like a blast of Han Solo's laser gun.
The voice doing the asking - slow and deliberate, laden with wicked intent and parched as if having chain-smoked its way through watching all six previous Star Wars movies back-to-back - sounds just enough like Darth Vader to awaken in this thirty-something memories of the first time Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, R2-D2 and the rest of them entered my consciousness.
But that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... I must have been six or seven years old when a friend came back from holiday in the United States - or was it Canada? - with a VHS cassette of Return of the Jedi.
We watched it over and over again that summer, on one of those newfangled video recorders. Today these are a relic, superseded by DVD players, on-demand movies and video streaming, but this was in the days even before they had become ubiquitous in our homes.
The novelty of the medium, of being able to watch and re-watch this story of good against evil, only added to Return of the Jedi's exotic allure.
The film transported us boys - and Star Wars is, I think, especially appreciated by boys in the same way that Frozen's Anna and Elsa are beloved by today's girls - to another dimension, a galaxy of lightsabers and Ewoks, Death Stars and Jedis, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon.
I must have watched the other films in the original trilogy around the same time - as if to underline how nothing in the Star Wars universe makes logical sense, the first one is actually Episode IV - and various toys, books and associated merchandise followed.
Thus are memories forged, the sort of memories that remain impregnable to the passage of time and impervious to the cynicism of adulthood. They are the sort of memories which, when triggered, instantly awaken your inner primary school child.
As well as the primary school child concealed somewhere deep within my psyche, I have a real primary school child of my own to worry about these days.
Helping to shape your child's memories is one of the many privileges of parenthood. It is also one of its burdens.
When it comes to creating memories, cinema is particularly potent. For me, and I'm sure most other men now in their mid-30s to mid-40s, Star Wars stands tall with other pillars of 1980s' childhood like the Superman and Indiana Jones movies, rising on a swell of John Williams scores and Harrison Ford wisecracks.
A father-son relationship - albeit a completely dysfunctional one - is central to the Star Wars story: "No, I am your father," Vader says to Luke. And perhaps that dynamic is part of its enduring appeal.
My son has only recently watched all three original Star Wars films - it was a bit of a thrill to be able to watch them with him - but thanks to a blizzard of toys and spin-off cartoons he was already fluent in the ways of the Force. What I would have given for Star Wars Lego when I was six...
Together, we have watched the handful of teasers and trailers already released to whet our appetite for The Force Awakens, which zaps into cinemas on December 17.
They have pulled the trigger on an arsenal of my embedded memories: hey, that bad guy looks a bit like Darth Vader; there's Han Solo - and wow, look at the Millennium Falcon; and isn't that Luke Skywalker and R2-D2? Never mind "have you felt it?"; it moved me.
Yet these memories are no longer mine alone; I have chosen to share them with my son. And memories need to be shared.
In passing on, I have also received, as we have created new memories together: my son let out a "wow, that is sooo cool" when the bad guy, striding menacingly through a snowy forest, fires up his lightsaber, throbbing red in the gloom, to reveal it has two little glowing red cross-blades at the top of its handle.
Those cross-blades pleased me too. Not because I am particularly impressed by a fancy lightsaber these days, but because it excited my son so much; and I was there, with him, when he saw it for the first time. We have built a new memory.
My shame is that I am guilty of missing out on opportunities to make more shared memories with my son.
Maybe a trip to the cinema during the Christmas holidays is in order.
Star Wars is just a film, but memories are not. When material things fade and when the credits roll, memories stay with us.
That, as a six-year-old might say, is sooo cool. And it is also why giving children the right sort of memories is one of a parent's sacred responsibilities. Have you felt it?
