It has been a long run. But I will finally get my hands on the seventh and final golden copy of Harry Potter. I feel excited. I bought a cute Harry Potter shirt to wear to the book party. For the last several years, I have been in love with a wizard and Hogwarts. I have laughed and shed tears. I stayed up until midnight to watch the new movies, on school nights. I feverishly flipped through the pages over and over again.
I remember the one year I foolishly ordered the book to come to my house (to beat the long lines). Then I had to wait for its arrival. The UPS man did not show up until 3p.m. and already other kids had their books since midnight. Lesson learned. I attend the book parties now!
I have made friends with the most unusual people. Little people, big people, black people, white people, hippies, rockers and Christians. I once waited for hours in line with a 70-year-old doctor, who you would have swore that we were friends all our lives. I have taken my time and really trained myself to be a great reader.
This truly has just been an awesome journey. As a writer I am indebted to all the great authors before me. Before I knew God made to be a writer, I was a reader. When Chi Fa Lu penned Double Luck, I cheered and cried for him. I felt sorrow when Alice Walker walked me through the rough passages of the Color Purple. I sat on the clouds with Tupac when I read his poetry. And I walked through the slums of the ghetto with Iceberg Slim. Hey Amber, I’m saying it. “…I’m a book slut.”
When I first met Harry, I was a weird and creative 16-year-old. One who was hardly ever in the grasp of peer pressure. I made my own little trouble here and there. Yet, I choose my own path. One day on my round to in-school suspension I picked up the book. There I sat. Harry and I. Since that day in my 6X8 wooden cubicle, once an alone kid, I have never been the same. Harry and all those before him changed the course of my wild thinking and decision making for the better.
In my book, my younger self once wrote a note to myself today. Here is an exclusive peek at my note:
“Books saved my life.”
Thanks J.K. Rowling, for sharing your brilliance.
I will miss Harry Potter.
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