Harry Potter & me
No spoilers are contained in this entry. Instead, it is a very personal tale regarding my relation to this series.
I got my book before work yesterday. I finished reading it at last today.
My connection to Harry Potter has been very personal. It was a series introduced to me by one I love, and I have shared it with my beloved friends for years. Harry's humble origins as a small, bespectacled boy who people thought was different connected well with me. And there's more, but I will mention that shortly.
I managed to avoid spoilers after the book getting leaked to the internet, and even the morning of release day, post-release parties.
But copies were everywhere at Kroger. Curious people, customers and coworkers, opened it up just to read the ending. Everyone was talking about the book.
One of my coworkers came up to me and threatened, half-jokingly, to tell me how Harry Potter ended. I told him in clear terms, "No!" My copy of the book was underneath my register, waiting to be opened on my first break.
My tension rose nonetheless. The possibilities of spoilers were everywhere. I'd been waiting six years for the end of this series.
In my deepest depression periods over the last two years, which I have not written about nor mentioned to nigh anyone, it had been thoughts of wondering how the Harry Potter series would end (as well as thoughts of my friends and family) that helped keep me from considering suicide overlong. (My depression is over with and I am well, but that was how it was once.)
Finally it was here, and I was stuck in a public area with people eager to discuss the ending... I was ready to panic.
The coworker working the register behind me proved my fears correct. He casually mentioned to passing customers that he had read the ending. I tensed and started trying to tune out his words, but nothing worked.
Then he breathed a word of the endings' contents. A tiny spoiler to the series' end, not the full of it, but important enough.
I freaked out, panicking, my body acting involuntarily against my mind's wishes.
I jumped up and down.
I shook my fists.
I yelled. Incoherent screeching.
I must've looked very childish. He stopped talking. Everyone stopped talking. The whole store turned to look at me. Customers and managers were freaked out. But the offender stopped talking about the ending.
I composed myself and apologized profusely to everyone in earshot, my face red, and my coworkers laughing openly, which I would probably have done in their places, considering the public display I had just made.
(I finally have something to talk about in those memes that ask, "What's your most embarrassing memory?")
But no one at work that day understood why. How could they? I do not blame them. I laughed it off.
I had never felt so vulnerable, so small, as I did then, just beforehand when I tensed up, during the moment, and its aftermath. I hated the feeling.
I went through the rest of my shift steadying myself, but secretly afraid that someone would try to ruin the end for me out of sheer joy for ruining it for someone else, not understanding how much it meant to me.
Fortunately, I made it to the end of my shift, and save for a few hours of sleep, I have read the book. My fear of spoilers is at an end.
It already seems like yesterday is far away, but I can recall just how I felt when my experience with the ending was threatened. I will be teased today at work, and probably until my last day at Kroger comes on the 31st, and that's okay. So long as I do not have to feel like that again.
Best of luck to anyone who finds themselves in situations similar to mine, for any story.
(yes i'm a dork, and proud)
I got my book before work yesterday. I finished reading it at last today.
My connection to Harry Potter has been very personal. It was a series introduced to me by one I love, and I have shared it with my beloved friends for years. Harry's humble origins as a small, bespectacled boy who people thought was different connected well with me. And there's more, but I will mention that shortly.
I managed to avoid spoilers after the book getting leaked to the internet, and even the morning of release day, post-release parties.
But copies were everywhere at Kroger. Curious people, customers and coworkers, opened it up just to read the ending. Everyone was talking about the book.
One of my coworkers came up to me and threatened, half-jokingly, to tell me how Harry Potter ended. I told him in clear terms, "No!" My copy of the book was underneath my register, waiting to be opened on my first break.
My tension rose nonetheless. The possibilities of spoilers were everywhere. I'd been waiting six years for the end of this series.
In my deepest depression periods over the last two years, which I have not written about nor mentioned to nigh anyone, it had been thoughts of wondering how the Harry Potter series would end (as well as thoughts of my friends and family) that helped keep me from considering suicide overlong. (My depression is over with and I am well, but that was how it was once.)
Finally it was here, and I was stuck in a public area with people eager to discuss the ending... I was ready to panic.
The coworker working the register behind me proved my fears correct. He casually mentioned to passing customers that he had read the ending. I tensed and started trying to tune out his words, but nothing worked.
Then he breathed a word of the endings' contents. A tiny spoiler to the series' end, not the full of it, but important enough.
I freaked out, panicking, my body acting involuntarily against my mind's wishes.
I jumped up and down.
I shook my fists.
I yelled. Incoherent screeching.
I must've looked very childish. He stopped talking. Everyone stopped talking. The whole store turned to look at me. Customers and managers were freaked out. But the offender stopped talking about the ending.
I composed myself and apologized profusely to everyone in earshot, my face red, and my coworkers laughing openly, which I would probably have done in their places, considering the public display I had just made.
(I finally have something to talk about in those memes that ask, "What's your most embarrassing memory?")
But no one at work that day understood why. How could they? I do not blame them. I laughed it off.
I had never felt so vulnerable, so small, as I did then, just beforehand when I tensed up, during the moment, and its aftermath. I hated the feeling.
I went through the rest of my shift steadying myself, but secretly afraid that someone would try to ruin the end for me out of sheer joy for ruining it for someone else, not understanding how much it meant to me.
Fortunately, I made it to the end of my shift, and save for a few hours of sleep, I have read the book. My fear of spoilers is at an end.
It already seems like yesterday is far away, but I can recall just how I felt when my experience with the ending was threatened. I will be teased today at work, and probably until my last day at Kroger comes on the 31st, and that's okay. So long as I do not have to feel like that again.
Best of luck to anyone who finds themselves in situations similar to mine, for any story.
(yes i'm a dork, and proud)