What I’m Blogging

This is a post about, what else, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Don’t worry. It’s not what you think. It’s really a tale about a Dad, his son and daughter, and a fairly good way of killing a Sunday morning and a good chunk of the afternoon as well.

…we are not in Kansas anymore and heading like a speeding bullet into adolescence…

The Kids had been well behaved and as a result, eager to claim their reward of going to see the latest of the Potter flicks. There was no chance that I was going to take them on opening day. I mean it was a good movie and all, but I didn’t need to see it that much. I aimed for the 11:30AM show on the Sunday. Heck we even got there at 11:00 AM and the darn thing was still sold out. Sure I could have bought tickets on-line, but then I wouldn’t have had my little rant now would I? In any event rather than join the queue for later show tickets, I waltzed (yes literally) over to the the “auto-ticket-kiosk-thingy” and swiped my credit card right into the next available show at noon.

Now of course, I was in a theatre with about an hour to wait and two kids to deal with. What to do, what to do? Well don’t these huge massively googleplexed cathedrals of entertainment have that all sorted out. There was food to eat, air hockey to play, video bad guys to shoot, and all other sorts of activities of the video game aperture type to hold our limited attention spans for the next sixty minutes. Insert credit card, receive tokens, Cha Ching! Children’s entertainment increased in direct proportion to the increase in my debt (and by extension a decrease to their eventual inheritance). Time to see the flick!

No spoilers here. Even if you are one of those rare individuals on the planet who have not seen the movie, I will not ruin your experience, except as it relates to the point I’m trying to make. So bail now and don’t say I didn’t warn you. My daughter loved the movie entirely. She wants to run away and be a wizard at Hogwarts. She’s eight. Heck, I’m in my forties, and I want to do that too. My son used to think this way, but recently he’s added a new spin on it. It was the scene at the ball, all of the characters were dressed in their finest robes. The climax of the scene was building, the audience was held in silent anticipation, and then we see Hermione in her gown transformed from little girl into beautiful young woman. The scene is magical and breaking the silence the audience is treated to a very loud “Whoa!” coming from the lips of my son. He’s eleven and swears that he hates girls. I, and several hundred witnesses think that perhaps he doth protest too much.

And so it begins… he either has a huge crush on Hermione, or he’s really into dress design (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Either way, we are not in Kansas anymore and heading like a speeding bullet into adolescence.