One day I casually picked up my anonymous relative, "Amy's" copy of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone and noticed that the inside cover was filled with tally marks. I asked her what they stood for and she replied, “Oh, I make a mark every time I finish reading it.” I discretely counted them. 87.
I opened up to a random page. I read, “A letter?”
Amy replied, “repeated Professor McGonagall faintly, sitting back down on the wall.”
Miss Jill: Harry learnt that…
Amy: There were seven hundred ways of committing a Quidditch foul and that all of them had happened during a World cup match in 1473.
Miss Jill: Ronald Weasley…
Amy: Who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them.
In spite of the fact that my grandpa had recently chastised us all for knowing Harry Potter better than the Book of Mormon, I stared at Amy in humble awe. It seemed like something that should be capitalized on, so I took her to a Harry Potter trivia contest at the local Borders. As we walked through the discount book tables, I eyed the competition. Fifty percent of the participants were children. The other fifty percent were graying Woodstock alumni, which made me a little apprehensive. I looked down at Amy to see if she was also feeling pre-match jitters, but she was eyeing her rivals with condescending confidence.
After several rounds of intense questioning, only Amy and a sextegenarian donning a crocheted sweater vest over a tie-dyed t-shirt remained. The Borders employee’s braces gleamed playfully as she asked the Grandma, “How many Knuts are in a Sickle?”
Her eyes dashed back and forth in panic and in desperation, she looked to her silver pony tailed companion for inspiration. He shrugged dejectedly. Expelliarmus. Amy’s face lit up like my neighbors with their crack pipes. “Twenty-nine,” she shrieked triumphantly. As Amy left Borders that night, with a Hedwig the Owl toy cradled in her warm embrace, she knew that it was not just a personal victory. It was also a victory against the pernicious evils of free love and twilight years drug abuse.
This post is dedicated to Megan Shirk for demonstrating superior command of Harry Potter vocabulary.
I have never read any book that many times. Ever.
ReplyDeleteThat alone is impressive.
(Of course, I have also never run for a full mile or ever learned how to complete a full cartwheel, but I still have a few years left on my odometer.)
That is supremely awesome. I've loved books before, but never like that. Ahh, book love.
ReplyDeletemy -sent me here with an email that said this was me but actually her sister's friend.
ReplyDeletei am happy.
i am not alone.
somebody else in the world is as happy (harry happy) as me too!
And that 'my ' is me! Kate kelly's sis Amy. Love your blog ;)
ReplyDelete