Harry Potter Week: Remembering COS

I don't have much of a story to tell about reading Chamber of Secrets. I read it during a sort of Harry Potter blitz, when I was trying to catch up with the books I had missed (having read Prisoner of Azkaban first).

But I do have a story to tell about watching the movie, and I do hope Daniel won't mind its telling. It's not about him anyway, but I'm sure he remembers the story. ^__^ This isn't, btw, the one I promised you. That one will come later tonight.

We all went to see the film together, all of us Honors-dorm nerds; not the whole dorm, of course, but the seven-odd of us who had formed our own little friendship and considered ourselves quite the nerdiest of them all. Most of them were already Harry Potter obsessed; I was not, not yet.

We had to drive forty miles out of our sleepy university town in order to get to the movie, and we spent the forty miles back in eager discussion of whether or not Ron Weasley would grow up with serious psychological problems because he spent his whole life as the shadow sidekick to the greatest wizard in the world. We quoted Dickens and noted that Ron was clearly not " the hero of his own life," and pondered what that meant for his future.

But the most memorable part of the evening was in the moment before the film began, when we were competing to see who knew the most answers to the movie trivia questions and mocking the syntactical errors of the advertisements for Coke and popcorn.

A trivia question came up about a movie I had seen in high school. Well... only half-seen.

"That movie was so boring that my boyfriend and I spent the whole thing making out in the movie theater," I said.

My friends were as shocked as if I had admitted to... oh, I don't know, fill in your own blank with the most scandalous thing you can think of.

"What -- you've never made out with someone in a movie theater?" I asked.

Faces began to redden.

"Well, you should," I continued blithely, "it's a lot of fun. Where did you go to make out, then, in high school? In the backseat of your car?"

There was a great deal of silence. All of the other young men in our company looked away, and suddenly I realized that I was perhaps the only member of our group that had gotten so far as first base.

Finally, the brashest member of the group spoke up.

"Well, let me be the first to say that I haven't yet kissed a girl, but I hope to while I'm in college."

And then, thank goodness, we all started laughing in simultaneous understanding and relief. And yes, I did offer to kiss them all, but was soundly refused.

And that is my Chamber of Secrets story. ^__^