By Benjamin Carter
I pulled into the parking lot of an off-campus book store at 11:30 p.m. ready to be part of the worldwide event that is a Harry Potter book release. When I saw just how crowded the parking lot was, I began to wonder if I had made a mistake in coming to the midnight party. Still, I had come this far already. Maybe it wouldn?t be as bad inside as it looked outside.
I walked in and immediately an employee took my white reservation slip and exchanged it for a yellow one. Progress, I thought. I was then told by said employee to go to the back of the line in the back of the store. I followed her orders and found my place in line. I waited patiently for 12:01 a.m. to arrive, while listening, patiently again, to the gentleman behind me tout Harry Potter and his creator J.K. Rowling as the saviors of literature.
Once we get going, the line will move pretty fast, I thought. It was when I returned to the rather slow moving line after being fooled by a false prophet claiming that anyone with a yellow ticket could pick up a book at the front of the store line-free, that I thought to myself, ?What the heck am I doing here??
But I pressed on, sure that the book would prove worth the effort. The smell coming from the shabbily dressed couple in front of me was something less than pleasant. The middle-aged man without a yellow or a white ticket behind me consistently misjudged the girth of his own jutting belly, and repeatedly bumped it into my back. All the while some thoughtful young men were ?entertaining' the crowd with less than mediocre guitar playing and makeshift bongos (the guy was beating on a store shelf).
The not-so-pleasant-smelling man in front of me seemed to have to touch every piece of merchandise he passed by. Sometimes he would just wipe his fingers on books (buyer beware), and other times he would pick up a CD and place it back in the wrong place after he was done ogling it.
I had expected the costumed kids running around and the crying babies, but this was really too much.
It was at about this point that I began formulating the idea for this very article. It was an amusing distraction, but it wasn?t enough to take my mind completely away from the unpleasant situation. I resolved by the end of the experience that when Book 7 comes out, if I go to the midnight release party, I?m bringing a date. At least then I can vent my frustrations on her and not burden a campus full of newspaper readers.
So was the book worth the effort? I don''t know, but it?s 1:23 a.m. July 16, the book is lying uncracked on my bed, and I?m writing an article for the newspaper. You be the judge. I?m going to go read.