Friday, November 18, 2005

Henry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone



Okay, so today’s Harry Potter movie day. Yeah, I’m going tonight. And I stood in line for hours to get a wristband for the midnight sale of the most recent book. Before that, when I managed a bookstore, I went through increasingly elaborate Harry Potter “events” for the last few books. I always remember, though, the very first time that I heard about the young wizard: A ritzy looking woman came into my Kentucky store and asked simply, “Where is Henry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone?” I asked her what type of book it was and she replied, “The best type, I’m told. It was all the rage when I was in London last weekend.”
I looked it up and found nothing. The woman got increasingly frustrated and mumbled about my ineptitude under her breath and how I should know a book as popular as this one. I explained to her that just because it’s popular in England, doesn’t even mean that it’s published in the US. I told her I couldn’t even find a listing on HARRY Potter at all and then she completely bit my head off and corrected me sternly. “HENRY!” she yelled. “Not ‘Harry,’ HENRY Potter! You can’t even get the name right. I apologized saying, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t have a listing and I’m afraid I just haven’t heard of Henry Potter.” Her haughty response: “You will, young man. You will!” Strangely, to this day, I have still NEVER heard of a popular book featuring a character named “Henry Potter.” I often wonder what the hell she was talking about…and how silly she must have felt later on when the whole world fell under HARRY Potter’s magical spell.

1 comment:

  1. Perhaps they will do a MASH version. Henry Morgan in "Col. Potter and the Swamp of Fire" :)
    Rick

    ReplyDelete