Star Wars Special Edition Memories

In pondering why I'm as interested in this year (and this day for Star Wars itself) being the tenth anniversary of the Special Editions as I am in it being the thirtieth anniversary of Star Wars itself, I've come up with the idea that it might be in part because I can remember seeing them in the movie theatre much better than I can remember my first viewing. (I'm pretty sure now that it was in 1981, and it obviously had some sort of effect on me, but most of the details now seem vague.) People at my university residence college organised a group trip, and we travelled to downtown Waterloo the Saturday evening after Friday opening night to a big theatre, not classically antique in any sense of design but not subdivided into multiple screens either. (I think it closed a few years later.) There was a considerable lineup outside to get in, and a packed house inside (although I recall only two people noticeable in costume in the entire crowd). The trailer for the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi Special Editions was a perfect lead-in, just seeing the opening crawl in full frame was interesting and somehow rewarding in itself, and it was entertaining to see both the changes I was expecting and the ones that surprised me (among them the new establishing shot of Ben's hut and Biggs's appearance on Yavin IV, even if that's left me wondering over the years if it somehow required knowledge of the novelisations to grasp at once, whereas it might have been possible before to ignore a line or two of dialogue and see Biggs as just one more generic Rebel pilot)... and yet, the obvious shared good feelings of that evening can seem to me in retrospect to be a last moment of tranquility. As with Attack of the Clones, I want to scream at people, "You liked it!..."
( Cut to spare the uninterested some fuming and strange opinions... )