Nerd culture may be pretty mainstream these days, but the geeks will never really be in charge so long as people continue to mistake a kid dressed like Darth Vader for some kind of weirdo. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to a student at Wisconsin’s Ashwaubenon High School today, when a “concerned parent” mistook his Vader costume for a bulletproof vest of some kind. The parent contacted authorities, who evacuated the school and put the area on lockdown; they eventually realized that there was no actual threat, and the kids were allowed back into the school.
This comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which quotes a local police officer as saying that the cops “expect” things like this to happen, and they “hope that people would call when this stuff takes place.” Considering that the “stuff” he’s literally talking about is a kid dressing like Darth Vader, it seems weird to “hope” that we should all live our lives in constant fear and assume that every high school student celebrating Star Wars Day is actually planning a mass shooting. Much like in the movies, it turns out that this Sith Lord was actually just a misunderstood kid underneath his black helmet and cloak.
Anyway, the police officer also says that they believe this “was an innocent mistake,” so it sounds like nobody is going to get in trouble.