Congratulations on Reading R2-D2's Memoir!

You’ll pick it up just for the cover: an image of R2-D2 sandwiched between Luke and Leia.  They’ll be leaning on him from above, smiling obliviously at the camera while R2-D2 sits in stoic consideration of his situation, clearly awaiting the time he’ll need after saving the universe to write this tell-all memoir.  You won’t notice that the title appears to be written in Wing-Dings until you get home and open the book up to discover a series of indecipherable symbols decorating its pages.

You’ll Google “R2-D2” and “indecipherable memoir” to try and discover just what’s going on and will, in turn, learn that those symbols actually represent the beeps and boops that R2-D2 made. R2-D2, beeping and booping, is telling his story, a story that, without translation, can only be understood by byzantine space navigation systems and computers that govern the capture of moisture in tremendously arid climates.  You’ll try to learn the language on your own, but after thirty minutes of classes you’ll find it tedious, so you’ll just jump into the book and begin reading it slowly, surely, pausing each time you don’t know a word.

The first chapter will take you a month and a half.  The second three weeks.  The third will take only ten days.  Once you begin the fourth, you’ll barely have to look up any words.  Engrossed by the behind-the-scenes tales of what really happened inside the Rebel Alliance during the Empire’s final days, you’ll thrill at salacious tales of three ways between Han, Luke and Leia, all the while developing the skills that allow you to talk to tiny robots that kind of look like trash cans.

When you’re finished with the book you’ll rush into your kitchen to tell your wife about what R2 saw Chewbacca doing to C-3P0 on Endor, but when you try to describe it she’ll just look at you with an expression of raw, unmitigated horror on her face.

It will take you a moment to realize that you’ve begun to speak in the language of astromech droids.  You’ll begin laughing, only pausing to explain to her, one word at a time, punctuated by more laughter, what you meant to say.  By the time you finish laboriously arranging your sentence in human language, a kernel of ill-defined fear will have taken root in the base of your brain.

Congratulations on Reading R2-D2’s Memoir!