Boba Fett in the peas (and other lost treasures)

Every time I've opened a bag of frozen peas in the past 40 years - and I really do mean ever single time, and I really fuckin' love peas - there has been the smallest part of me that still hopes to see a Boba Fett action figure in there.

Sometimes you lose some mundane possession, and it ruins your day and you never forget it. I still mourn the loss of my first great pair of sunglasses, which I left them behind at a screening of Heavenly Creatures at the Hoyts 8 on Moorhouse Ave in Christchurch, in the shadow of the Port Hills where the terrible events of that movie took place, and that was in 1994. Hell, I still kick myself for leaving  a prized soccer ball at the playground out at the Waipopo Huts, a decade earlier.

It's stupid, because all these things are replaceable, but it's still annoying, and sad. I really liked that soccer ball, man.

The things I hated losing most as a kid were my Star Wars action figures, because I coveted all I could. The good stuff never made it as far as my part of the world, but I still got a few.  The only Luke I ever had was in his Hoth outfit, but I still had a Walrus Man. They were relatively expensive, and I might only get two or three figures a year, so appreciated what I could.

One of the biggest disasters was when I was six or seven, and somehow thought my C-3PO and Death Star Droid would have a great time swishing around in the toilet bowl when I flushed it, but they just fucking disappeared, and were gone forever. That was a life lesson.

They were gone, and even though I spent the next few days looking in all the drains, I knew they were gone forever. But I never gave up on the Boba Fett I lost. 

He was accidentally flung into a field of peas next to Morrison Park on the edges of Timaru, sometime in the early 80s. Me and my mates spent ages looking for him in the pea plants, but he somehow vanished.

I was absolutely gutted - they were valuable as hell,  because you only very rarely saw anything as cool as a Boba Fett figure around here, we all would have killed for a stormtrooper of Vader figure, and you know what, it only just occurred to me that one of the other kids who helped me look for it probably palmed it for themselves.

Son of a bitch.

Still, I convinced myself that maybe it would get harvested and end up in a bag of peas somewhere, I'd read stories about people finding lost wedding rings in the fish guts, so it didn't seem that implausible. Maybe there was a Boba in the peas.

I got another Boba Fett a few years later, who was terribly melted in a fireworks incident, and then another figure that I picked up in the 90s, and still have today. I can get all sorts of Boba Fetts from the local stores now - and have been sorely tempted by one based on the eternal art of Cam Kennedy - but I still take a peek inside every damn bag of peas I open.

I drove past the pea field the other day, and it's just a curtain factory now, and I would like to say I won't be wondering if Boba Fett will turn up in a curtain somewhere, but that would be a lie.