In one of the daily word association games I play with my friend Paul over IM every morning (ideally to keep our minds sharp, but really just because we're both insane), Indiana Jones came up and I was forced to quit.
Mostly because I started having an insane flashback.
The year was 1981. I was a wee lad of six during that summer, and my parents (who never censored anything my brother and I watched) had taken me to see Raiders of the Lost Ark not long after it opened.
During the movie, my six year old brain latched onto one thing and one thing only:
Han Solo was the guy fighting Nazis.
More importantly, my six year old brain completely failed to register that his name in this movie was Indiana Jones. Why? Because I had seen Empire Strikes Back in theaters seven times the year before and I knew Han Solo was Harrison Ford. Somewhere along the way, I decided that Harrison Ford was Harrison Ford in any movie that wasn't Star Wars....which included the Frisco Kid, which I'd seen on tv recently. To this day I still have no idea the name of the character he played in that movie.
Does that makes sense? Six year old me thought it did.
In mid-August we went to the Carribean. Guadeloupe, if I recall correctly. My parents befriended another couple from France around the same age, and they had a son who was about my age. Because they wanted to enjoy adult time together, they made sure Louis and I became friends and sent us off to play together at the pool.
Louis (who, as I recall, spoke English better than I did) suggested we play Raiders of the Lost Ark. I agreed, though I don't really know how that was supposed to work.
"I'll be Doctor Jones!" Louis shouted.
"I'll be Harrison Ford!" I yelled, completely oblivious to the fact that I had just agreed to be the actor playing the character Louis was going to pretend to be.
After running around the pool fighting invisible Nazis for a couple of minutes we both realized we were using an invisible bullwhip and came to the same realization.
"No, I called Doctor Jones!" Louis yelled.
"His name is HARRISON FORD!!" I yelled back.
We started to argue over who was going to play the guy in the fedora and leather jacket. The arguing escalated. I don't remember exactly why, but I wound up punching Louis in the face and knocking him into the pool. I'm sure his being French had nothing to do with it.
Suffice to say, Louis was unhappy. His parents were unhappy. MY parents were livid. Mostly because the cool couple they had been planning to hang with decided we were boorish Americans prone to violence (duh).
In the aftermath, when faced down by my angry parents, my father asked why I punched Louis into the pool.
"BECAUSE HE WOULDN'T LET ME BE HARRISON FORD!!!" I wailed, knowing I was in deep shit.
I don't remember what the punishment was, to be honest. The real punishment was that I didn't get to be Harrison Ford.