Confessions of a muggle

On New Year’s Day, my cousins and I were lighting sparklers and waving them at the passing cars because…it was New Year’s Day. I was watching my younger cousin run around, waving her sparkler in circles when she yelled, "Wingardium Leviosa!" and jumped off the sidewalk. I just rolled my eyes and stubbed my sparkler on the concrete.

I must be the only person around that does not like Harry Potter. I admit it—I do not like Harry Potter. Not Book 1, not Book 2, not Book 3 and not Book 4. Go ahead and mob me. I’m used to the weird and menacing looks I get from my peers when I say that I refuse to read Harry Potter. "Are you crazy?" they shriek, their jaws practically touching the ground. They try to convince me to read any one of the books, but I tell them I’ve tried. Two chapters into Book 1, I fell asleep. I tried to read it again but every time I did, I just felt sleepy…bored, even.

My friends told me to read Book 4 instead. So I went to the bookstore, bought the brick of a book (it was incredibly thick!). I started to read it at home and got bored after four pages. I gave up. I’ve had more patience with Gone with the Wind, which I finished and loved.

I just don’t understand the appeal of the whole thing. (Okay, please don’t try to explain it anymore, my friends have all tried.) When people gather around and excitedly talk about Harry Potter and his adventures, I just look at them vaguely and tune out until they change the subject…which happens after, oh, about ten thousand years. I have never been curious about Harry Potter and his gang. I just shrug it off if people totally ignore me and engage in long, winding conversations about weird creatures whose names I can’t remember and don’t understand.

It’s really amazing how this Harry Potter phenomenon has taken the world by storm. Bookstores keep running out of Harry Potter books. There was this time when everyone was desperately seeking Book 3 but bookstores everywhere had no stock of it. When Book 3 arrived, you could see tons of people engrossed with the Prisoner of Azkaban (is that right? I have no idea…). I went to the house of my guy friend and he was reading Book 3. Now, he’s one of my closest friends and when I tried talking to him, he was totally out of it! His eyes were glued to the pages and he wasn’t hearing a word I was saying. After he had finished the book, he explained how he had been waiting for this book for a really long time.

Meanwhile, in my English class, everyone was supposed to pick a person whose works we were supposed to compile into an anthology. I was torn between Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Frost, but one of my classmates asked if he could do J.K. Rowling. Oh, God, I thought, will this Harry Potter fever ever die down? Another one of my classmates asked in which period of American Literature did Harry Potter fall under. I simply went back to being torn between Poe and Frost.

Some of my friends even aspire to be Harry Potter. One of them told me how he had ordered round glasses so he could look like Harry Potter. He wished that he had dressed up with round glasses, a pointed hat, unruly hair, a black robe and a lightning bolt on his forehead last Halloween. That would have been cool, he said. Sure. I just nodded and let him alone with his Potter fantasies.

It’s not just the books that everyone’s crazy about. Everything that has Harry Potter marked on it is definitely popular. I saw slipper socks that had Gryffindor and Slytherin on it and they were selling like hotcakes. I saw Harry Potter pillows being given to most of my Potter-maniac friends for Christmas. Some people downloaded logos and pictures and saved them into diskettes, even used them as wallpaper.

When the movie came out, practically all the theaters were showing it. I decided to watch it because the effects looked really cool in the trailer. Besides, any movie with Alan Rickman in it is definitely okay with me. When the movie ended, my parents were like, "So? What did you think? Do you still hate it?" I smiled and said that Daniel Radcliffe (who played Harry) was incredibly adorable. At least now I know what muggles are (non-magic people), what quidditch is (a game) and who Hermione is. My friends and I developed monster crushes on Oliver Wood, the quidditch captain. I can relate a little bit when people start talking about Harry Potter, but I’d rather not.

Even though I still don’t like Harry Potter, I appreciate the fact that since the release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, a lot of people have actually rediscovered the magic of reading. I’ve been a bookworm since I was a little girl and I’m always utterly disappointed when I see people in bookstores actually ignoring the books. Ask people if they’ve read this certain book and they’ll say, "No, but I’ve watched the movie." Now, people go to bookstores to pick up books they want and if it’s not there, they go back several times until they can read it in the comforts of their home. I’m glad that people have found such a passion for books, even if it is Harry Potter. If J.K. Rowling can write books that spark the interest of people, then I guess she’s okay with me. I may be a muggle, but I do understand and love the magic of reading.

So when I see my little cousins stampeding into a bookstore to grab the latest Harry Potter book, I roll my eyes but I’m glad that they’re into reading instead of just watching TV and playing computer games. I’ve always thought that the stories about Harry Potter weren’t for me, but at least they capture the hearts of the young and the young-at-heart people. I guess I’m not so against Harry Potter anymore. So let the quidditch games and Wizard’s Chess begin! Just leave me out of it and let me enjoy Lord of the Rings in peace.