My life as an outsider: Searching for identity and survival in a Harry Potter world

If facebook stati are to be trusted as any kind of gauge of what people are thinking about, caring about, and actually doing, a significant number of people who have seen fit to befriend me there are into Harry Potter. Like, way into Harry Potter. It’s 1 a.m. and I’m about to go to bed. Many of them are less than an hour into the latest installment of the cinematic one-offs of these books. Some of them are dressed like wizards or witches or gremlins or something. In public.

I’ve read exactly 1/3 of the first book (years ago) and seen none of the movies, but I’m clearly becoming more and more marginalized in that respect.

And that’s what occurred to me as I was preparing to eat a spoon of peanut butter (with a bit of honey) and drink some milk before bed: I think we may be reaching a cultural tipping point with Harry Potter.

I mean, at what point does this particular affection so saturate the culture that all of you Harry Potter weirdos become the normal people and the few of us who remain HP-agnostic/atheist types become the weirdos?

Maybe it’s already happened.

Now before all you Hogwarts dreamers try to turn me into a frog for calling you a weirdo, please note that I assigned no moral value to either normalcy or weirdness. Everybody’s weird in some way, and normal is overrated. I mean, I don’t get the costumes and magic wands and evil spells, but I’ve certainly got my own weird stuff.

Though, to be fair, none of it involves dressing up in costumes to go to movies.

Or posting “I’VE GOT MY TICKETS TO THE 12:17 SHOWING OF HALF-BREED PRINCE! OMG! I’M IN HEAVEN WITH HARRY! I LOVE HIM SO MUCH I’D MARRY HIM IF HE WASN’T A MADE UP BOY BELOW THE LEGAL AGE!!! LOL! ROFL! JK!” on facebook.

But seriously, please withhold your wrath. I’m not really making fun of you.

Well, I mean, I am, but I love you all. Mostly. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with (most) of you. And I do think there are things wrong with me that forever disqualify me from any sort of classification of normal. Like, a lot of things. More things than you can shake your magic wand…too much?

What I’m saying is don’t get mad at me. I’m just lashing out because life is hard when you’re part of a misunderstood, marginalized group so unlike the rest of the population.