For those of you who read this section with any regularity (are there any of you like that? You should tweet me; I'd love to meet you), you know my Off The Record column is mostly about music. There is nothing I appreciate more than music.
Except Harry Potter.
I appreciate the hell out of the "Harry Potter" series, created by novelist/mastermind J.K. Rowling. In fact, I appreciate the series just as much as my favorite record of all time and just as much as any UF football championship - both of which are saying a lot.
It took me years to pick up the first novel in the series. When I was in fourth grade, my dad brought home "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," a fairly small paperback novel with a picture of a nerdy-looking kid flying a broomstick on the cover.
The fourth-grade version of me didn't understand the concept of taking a book recommendation from my parents, so on the shelf it sat for years. For some reason I decided to read that first novel a couple of years later, when more books had been added to the series. I will always remember the first sentence.
"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."
So began a long journey through reading exactly 4,100 pages about that nerdy-looking kid with a lightning-bolt scar on his forehead. You don't need to hear any story about how I waited in line at midnight to buy the seventh and final novel, then read it in two days - you probably did the same yourself.
Instead, the point of this column is to try, in some way, to express the magnitude of what this series has meant to me and to our generation. I'm about to start my third year here at UF, and those of you who are of a similar age know that we quite literally grew up with Harry, Ron and Hermione.
The first film in the series was released on November 16, 2001. I had a birthday party at a movie theater to watch it, since my 11th birthday was on October 27. I turned 11, and we watched a group of first-year Hogwarts students when they were 11.
Now I'm 20, and even though Harry Potter is supposed to be 17 in this last film, we all know very well that he acts beyond his years. For only a 17-year-old, he has survived a phenomenal amount of life-threatening situations and knows a great deal about magic. Even if he's not that great at Transfiguration, and even if he isn't the best at getting to Diagon Alley via Floo powder, he makes up for it by being the most courageous teenager in wizard or Muggle history.
As I'm sure most of you did, I learned a lot through reading the "Harry Potter" series. Never, in any novel, have I felt the identification with the characters, the complete immersion in another world. The same can be said for most of you: Never again will there be a novel or series that we completely obsess over like we did this one.
Never again will you get jitters when Harry approaches Cho Chang in the hallway for the first time. Never again will your jaw drop when Dumbledore dies on page 596. Never again will you feel your heart dive into your stomach when Hedwig takes an Avada Kedavra curse on the way to The Burrow. Never again will you laugh at a ridiculous prank pulled by the Weasley twins.
So it's okay if you want to cry when "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" starts at midnight tonight. It's okay if you want to cry throughout the entire damn movie, because you've never witnessed the end of something like this.
Except you should know that - if you want - you will always be able to experience those things. Even if you've read each novel 20 times and watched each film dozens more, Harry Potter will never fade. He will forever be immortalized in those 4,100 pages and eight movies. Whenever you want, no matter how old you are or what job you're doing, you can easily escape to that Wizarding world if you want to.
And all will be well.
