the return of the native

I skipped church to read Harry Potter.

I think there ought to be a T-shirt for that. Or...man, this would have been funny...I could have gotten up for church and taken Harry Potter with me to pull out and read during the sermon. The obnoxious semi-literate Christians who demonize the books without ever having read them deserve a little obnoxiousness in return.

I think this is my favorite book of the series so far.

The fifth year reunion wasn't the trip to the dentist that I thought it would be. Everyone was pretty laid back and talking about plans for the future and new jobs; no one was lording success over anyone else (because no one is successful yet); and a few people that never talked to me in high school came up and asked enthusiastically what I've been up to. So it looks like some of the clique borders (our class was extremely clique-ish...oh, I don't miss those days) are dissolving a little bit, becoming more semi-permeable. Most people are getting out of Erie as fast as they can drive...there are no jobs to be had and no homes to be bought; sad when a small town and its neighboring city cannot sustain the people who were born there...like nearly all of us were.

I accidentally impressed them by dropping the f-bomb in a story I was telling. When Joe went off into gales of astonished laughter and told him I had just made his day, I stopped and blinked for awhile and said, "Well...glad to have helped." Remembering that in high school I never. ever. swore. Well, things change, as some of you might have noticed.

*Note* The next paragraph repeats a rather bad word. If you are uncomfortable with bad words, skip to the following paragraph.

(My delivery of said f-bomb was perfect. Hillori was recounting the time a woman had pulled over while the two of us were walking in the road to scream at us about "fucking kids, when the fuck are you going to stop walking in the fucking middle of the fucking road and start walking on the fucking sidewalk," and at this point in the story I interjected, in a reasonable tone and totally deadpan, "But ma'am...there is no fucking sidewalk." Those of you who tutored me in f-bomb usage would have been proud.)

*Note* G-rated posting resumes here.

So that was the fifth year reunion...at the local Gravel Pit Park under a pavilion, with a couple of kids running around throwing rocks while their parents and classmates played beer-pong at one in the afternoon and flies crawled eagerly over the grilled hot dogs and hamburgers. Some people are married, most are not, three-quarters of the class didn't come, and all in all, although my head was thick and tired from a long week and a long drive and not enough sleep, it wasn't the afternoon of nagging torture that I was half anticipating. And I don't have to do it again for five more years.

(Mom and Dad have a narcoleptic computer. If you get up and walk away from it for more than thirty seconds, it's gone solidly to sleep by the time you come back.)

It's good to be home...I get up and the coffee is waiting, the smells are wonderfully familiar, I'm surrounded by animals (to whom I seem to be considerably less allergic than I was in my childhood), and Mom is giving me a cutting of a lovely house tree that she received as a gift...my goal of becoming a plant lady may be realized at rapid pace.

And Leigh Ann has bestowed upon me the gift of literature...I have fourteen new (well, not new at all, but new to me) books that she bought at the Erie-wide Used Book Sale in June. So in addition to a few gems that I can't wait to get my fingers into, like a collection of short stories by Ursula K. LeGuin, a novel by A. S. Byatt, and a volume of Billy Collins poems, I have a few twentieth century classics that I have no excuse for not owning, like The Bell Jar and Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Twentieth century fiction and poetry, particularly that written after 1975, really rocks my world.

Oh, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is excellent.