All I want to do right now is ready Harry Potter.
Sometimes, it's just helpful to escape into fantasy. I'm escaping home for the weekend tomorrow, although more for practical reasons - aka, a frantic job search - than for fun. But that isn't enough for me, apparently - what started out as a promising day just sort of... spiraled downward. And I just don't want to deal with reality right now.
Anyway, I just love the entire series. I know, I'm not very original - everyone and their mother (like, literally - my parents are just as into it as I am) loves Harry Potter. But it just seems to contain so much of my childhood, that I truly feel like it's a big part of my life. It probably actually helps that my parents like it too, because it's kind of "our thing." We started reading the first book together (before they were popular) because my mom's friend told her about it, "because you like books so much." (I've mentioned that both of my parents were English majors, haven't I? No. Ok, then. Now you know. It all makes sense now, doesn't it?)
I remember when my interest in Harry first really took off. We had started reading the first few chapters together, and I was interested, but I didn't think it was anything super special. A few days later, I did something stupid (honestly, I have no recollection of what) and got sent to the dreaded "time-out." Sitting in my room, no doubt fuming at the injustice of it all, I came across the book lying next to my bed. My parents had probably left it there after reading it. Having nothing better to do, while in time-out, I picked it up... My mom had to come in and pry me out of time-out when my time was up. So much for that punishment.
The second book had just come out, so my parents eagerly bought that for the household - this time, we all read it alone, too impatient to finish to continue reading aloud. The third was just about to come out - by this time, it had all caught on and everyone was reading it - and we went to the first midnight book unveiling. My mom, the librarian, was really too excited about everyone making such a fuss about a book. Then there was the fourth book, and the fifth, and the sixth. Actually, I do remember a brief "I'm too cool for this" phase around the time the fifth book came out, in which I refused to go to the midnight showing and instead had a sleep over with a friend. ...That lasted all of about 2 days, when I finally got a hold of the book after my dad was done with it, and realized that, no, the book was probably actually too cool for me.
The seventh book came out right before my senior year, right after I had come home from my trip to Germany. I had missed my parents so much on that trip, and it was really exciting that I had the book release with them to look forward to - even if it was the last one. By this time, we had taken to buying multiple copies of the book, because we all wanted to read it at once. (Actually, I should say that "my dad and I both wanted to read at once." Ever the patient one - and sometimes probably "single parent" to us as children - my mom would wait until one of us was done for her turn.)
The three of us still read it out loud on long car journeys - now that we all know what happens, we're a lot more patient with the "reading out loud" thing again. It's like we've come full circle, back to when I was 11 or something. (That's the other thing about Harry that's always been particularly cool to me - I basically grew up with him. We were always within about 6 months of each other when the books came out.)
And here's my favorite Harry Potter thing with my parents: When I got my tonsils out during my junior year of high school, it was overall an incredibly painful, awful experience. I hazily remember lying on my bed that night - I'd been sick going into the surgery, the pain medication dosage was accidentally too low, and I had some kind of reaction to the anesthetic that made my entire body hurt to move. My dad basically took care of me the entire time - I couldn't do much for myself. Between the pain and the drugs, I was pretty out of it. My mom got sick right after the surgery and didn't want to risk getting me sick again with my immune system capacity so lowered. Anyway, my dad came in every four hours exactly (including obscure times, like 5am when we'd both been asleep) to give me the Tylenol/Codeine that was prescribed. He'd say "Want me to entertain you? We're both up anyway..." and read Harry until I was ready to sleep again.
No comments:
Post a Comment