Whiplash

Thanksgiving break is basically over. I have to be on a train back to my second home in about ten hours, and it feels like just yesterday I was getting off that damn thing. I had plans to get everything done while I was here. I was going to do work on my big bed, see Harry Potter with the family again, maybe see some friends, run all my errands like a boss, and generally feel on top of shit.

But I spent it watching Youtube, getting into fights with the family members I live with, crying about said fights and also about dead pets (Our parakeet died and left the other one without a buddy, and I'm still torn up about my darling Penny) and eating way too much food. Well maybe that last one isn't so bad. But I got no work done and I'm just exhausted. Emotionally and physically. I don't feel like me vs. finals will be a fair match. But maybe I'll pull a miracle out from somewhere. I do have four hours on a train tomorrow. Those will hopefully be cozy and productive. I'll try and nab a seat by the window so I can see what the world looks like from Stamford to Amherst. That would be nice.

Why I am raising my future offspring on Harry Potter

In three hours, I'll be sitting in a movie theater with popcorn and caffeine in hand, having heart palpitations as the lights dim and the first installment of Deathly Hallows begins. The beginning to the end of an era.

I've been a Harry Potter fan since I was about ten years old. So basically for half my life. My mom and I used to take turns reading pages of The Sorcerer's Stone, which started out slow but ended up being something neither of us could put down no matter how long past my bedtime it was getting. Even at that young an age, I knew how special this book was. Beneath all the fantasy and magic (which was fantastic as well) there was something undeniably real. These kids had real problems and personalities. I thought they were a lot like me and I was honestly a little bit surprised and devastated when I didn't get a Hogwarts letter delivered to my house.

Harry Potter and I grew up together, in a way. As I got older, so did the books. Harry and Ron got into fights about things just like my friends and I did. I had teachers who didn't like me just like Professor Snape had it out for all the Gryffindors. On days when I fought with my parents, I prayed that the Weasleys would adopt me into their house and Molly would knit me a sweater with an "L" on it. As I applied to colleges in junior year, I felt pangs of sadness because I knew, no matter how much I wanted it to be real, Hogwarts would never exist in the world I lived in and I couldn't just delete my Common App account and go there to double major in Charms and Divination and minor in flirting with attractive wizard boys.

I love that Harry Potter exists in this world and is such a major part of culture. I think a lot of fantasy books geared towards young people today tend to be either wildly unbelievable or just poorly written (I'm looking at you, Stephanie Meyer. But I'll save my Twilight rant for another blog post.) Harry Potter books are neither of those things. The characters are so developed and the world they live in so intricately detailed that you'd believe it was nonfiction. This is probably why all the deaths have hit me so hard. I was legitimately depressed for a long time after she killed Fred in book 7 (This may have also had something to do with my literary crush on him.)

Now we get to the part where I address the title of this post. Yes, I am saving my Harry Potter books so I can read them with my kids. I plan to start when they're eleven and keep going until they're seventeen, just like those little chaps at Hogwarts. I want my kids to know things that these books talk about. Like how you can be happy without having a lot of money (If I make a living from writing books, they're going to have to learn this for sure), how when people die, they can't ever come back but you can still keep them in your memory, how you don't have to go into dark rooms by yourself to be brave (Looking at you, Neville Longbottom.) If I have a daughter, I want her to know that like Hermione Granger, you can be smart and pretty at the same time and as long as you just be yourself the guy of your dreams will eventually come around.

I'm getting a bit sentimental, I know. But these books mean a lot to me, and I've got them on the brain now because I'm going to my first Harry Potter midnight showing tonight. It'll be an excellent night and I can't even stand how excited I am right now. But I'll probably have to look away when Hedwig dies, because that is going to make me cry hard.

The perks of staying in.

That's me, stumbling around with a case of the giggles. Just another Thursday night at 51, thank goodness. Sometimes, living here is more than alright.

I didn't realize until this year that when you go out and try to find a decent party to crash, you miss things like a rerun of Hugh Jackman hosting SNL with musical guest Mick Jagger. Heaven on earth, people.

OH MY GOD THE JARRET'S ROOM SKETCH IS STARTING. It's supposed to take place at Hampshire, you know? After ignoring a few factual details, I realized that Horatio Sanz's character looks like every single lovable stoner here. So basically everyone here.

In other Hampshire-y news, one of my professors played a video montage of World War One doctor W.H.R. Rivers set to that Sarah McLachlan song from the ASPCA ads that I always have to change the channel during. Yup. My professor is a fangirl for a World War One doctor, and so I had to sit through a montage of pictures and video clips from the biopic set to a song that usually accompanies sick kittens. I have a Pavlovian response to it. It makes me reach for a remote. But there was no remote. So I just had to sit uncomfortably while stifling a case of inappropriate giggles. You can't make this shit up. Even if you're a creative writing concentrator.