My Alarming and Secretive Relationship with Harry Potter

This post has been long-await, although only by me. (I very much doubt that any of you have left at the edge of your seats in anticipation of this post.) At multiple points during the lifetime of this modest blog, I have made confessions that I am not a fan of Star Trek, I am not a fan of Star Wars. I don't read comics and I don't watch Anime. I'm not very fond of 3-D movies and cannot even be credited as a half-hearted Sci-Fi enthusiast. Hearing of superheroes, spies, and aliens tire me; and I have never played a role-playing game of Magic while dressed in a star-spangled wizard's cape from Party City. What then, you might ask, makes me a nerd aside from lack of social skills? I will tell you...

HARRY POTTER



No, I did not link to a Wikipedia page explaining the background of Harry Potter or something of that sort. I fairly assumed that any reader of The Nerd Archives is also a fan of Harry Potter. If you have watched the movies but failed to read the books, I have no further interest in you. Go run off and make some friends or go outside. If you have not read the books, seen the movies, or heard of Harry Potter...you, sir, are unfit to lick the mud off the Chosen One's British tennis shoes.

I will start my story from the beginning.

'Twas a long time ago in the town of Beaumont, Texas. I was a young lad who still believed that the stork brought babies and that God cared about me...and one day my mother brought me on a trip to the movies theaters. I was delighted, even though she made me use the women's restroom instead the men's. I was delighted, you see, because the first Harry Potter film. Had just come out. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

I am one to believe in fate, because if my mom had not allowed me to see that movie that certain day, I might not be the obsessive and delusional Harry Potter fanatic that I am today. The movie was rated PG, and my mother--being both a mother and a priestess--was reluctant to let me see it. I threw a perfect little tantrum, though, banging my tiny fists on the ground and whatnot. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was the persuasive hand of destiny, that softened her heart and let me see the movie.

I was young then. I was naive, short, and it was hard to understand me when I talked. But that day my empty head was filled with stories of witches and wizards and magic and good and evil and British accents. I left the movie theater with a grin on my face and a buzzing in my head--and I was smiling for six weeks after watching that movie.

I saw Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets after that and found it just as delightful. It was after the viewing of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban that I felt inclined to read the books that inspired these magical films. So I read them.

The books were to me like artificial pacemakers are to victims of heart disease--I depended on them. I devoured their words thirstily, bordering on obsession. I read all the way up to the sixth book in the span of a few weeks. After that, I waited a terribly long year, and read them again. After that, I read them again.

Finally, the seventh book was going to be released. All I could think about was attending that midnight party at Barnes and Noble. I heard stories that there would be the most hallucinatory and unhealthy Harry Potter fanatics in Atlanta. I heard of costumes that would stray from the typical Harry, Ron, and Hermione...and venture to Hagrid and Dumbledore and the Womping Willow. I was ecstatic.

My parents were staying in Maine for two weeks, and unfortunately my conservative aunt had been staying with us for the past week. She thought Harry Potter was about as holy under God's eyes as Catholicism, (which she considered a cult.) My parents had given her explicit orders to let us attend the midnight Harry Potter worship session, but she refused. It was until the next day, at the outrageous time of 9:43 AM, that she drove us to Barnes and Noble to purchase a copy of the book. She waited an extra day so she could be there for the CD signing with Taylor Hicks.

I was devastated. You see, I'm a fan of incomprehensible Harry Potter knowledge. I'm a legend on online Harry Potter quizzes. I've memorized all there is to memorize. I know spells and curses better than any wizard in the book does. I thought I would get a letter accepting me into Hogwarts for three years of my life. But I can never claim to have ever been to a Harry Potter party.

This is what makes me a nerd--Harry Potter. I cringe every time my mother or sister mix up their Harry Potter facts, and I clench my fists every time I hear that someone has seen the movies but not read the books. I am unstoppable.

Since then, I have come to despise the movies. I would tell you why, but I couldn't stop myself if I started. I have read the Harry Potter series five times in all, and have a shrine for him in my closet.

Thank you for reading.