dissing boba will only bring you trouble.

I'm not really dissing the actual Boba Fett. Just the gentleman who dresses up like Boba at sci-fi conventions and feels that it's necessary to give Chris the bird.

Boba Fett was one of Chris' childhood heroes, so you can imagine the trauma it caused him when this happened. It was like a slap through time across Chris' chubby 10 year-old cheeks.

So to all the Boba Fett impersonaters out there I say this: With great costumes comes great responsibility.

Just ask any of the characters at Disney World. When you're dressed up like Donald Duck you can't go around dry humping kids. You have to be better than that and rise up against your natural urges.

I think there's more to the story here. Why did he flip Chris the bird? Did he mistake him for Han Solo? I ache to know the reason. Of course, to paraphrase a related character, perhaps "there is no why."

I'm sorry the image of his childhood hero has been forever tarnished. Perhaps over time Chris will recover his admiration, but for now it appears that one middle finger was a bit of a Fett accompli...

Well, actually, there was a why. You see, Chris sometimes has Tourette's-ish motor impulses to tap and pet things he really has no business tapping or petting. This typically happens when he's riding on a crowded subway. He'll see a woman perhaps wearing a fuzzy pink coat and he'll get a painful urge to, say, reach out and pet the coat three times, no more, no less. Chris has a will of steel and can control these tics most of the time, but every now and again one gets the better of him, which is what happened at the convention.

In the elevator Chris got the sudden urge to pat Boba Fett's butt plate to the tune of Funiculì, Funiculà, and the impulse was so strong that he had to do it or his head would burst. So Chris patted away, aplogizing profusely as he did so and sincerely explaning, "It's a tic, I swear. I have no choice but to play Funiculì, Funiculà on your butt."

But Boba Fett showed no sympathy to Chris. He turned around, slapped Chris' hands, and gave him the finger until the elevator reached his floor, which was an awfully long and awkward length of time to give someone the finger in such close quarters.

Then the elevator doors closed on a teary-eyed Chris, who had no choice but to complete the tic by tapping out the rest of Funiculì, Funiculà on his own butt, which, while firm and supple, just didn't have the same satisfyingly pure sound of Boba Fett's butt plate.