One Week One Day

I haven't counted anything down since, well, I was going to say since I was a teacher and I "helped" my students countdown to winter holiday, or labor day, or Friday, or seventh period, or 2:05, but really it was just a few weeks ago when we thought we were taking that trip to Mexico that we had planned for four months. Then, just as when I was a teacher or a student (of varying degrees and maturity), I pulled out my calendar and slashed, hash marked, and tallied my way to that dreamy destination, that ultimate, if brief freedom, that coveted prize.

And, except for my moment of beachy weakness, I really didn't expect I'd be jumping into the countdown so soon. Or late. You know, in life. Because whittling away the minutes, hours, or days just seems like it's heading in the wrong direction. I'm getting of the ripeness where I should be holding on to those fleeting moments, not casting them away so carelessly.

Add to that confusion and backasswardness that I'm actually admitting to this on my blog. Well, this entry is just so wrong.

But counting I am. And inverting my predicates as I go. One week and one day. And by now, you're chomping at the bit, you're tapping your fingers, you're grabbing your monitor in your hands and shaking it like you would an iBook that's gone on the fritz, screaming, begging me to tell you what it is that I'm so damn adolescent about.

That is, unless you're doing it, too.

One week and one day, folks. Until . . . Harry Potter. Which really is just a cruel crumb of a two-week-and-four-day cupcake away from the big tasty, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Now, try to tell me--and try to be convincing--that you don't have a secret stash of tally marks that's counting the days until Harry and his crew resurface. (Spoiler alert! Will they really abandon Hogwarts?) Just try. And I still won't believe you.

I haven't had this much pent up anticipation since Duran Duran came to town when I was an eighth grade. Or since, ahem, the days of premarital sex. This is an event. A butterflies-aflurry, will-the-day-ever-arrive, and can-I-possibly-survive-the-wait ardor.

We just don't get many events like this in life. And at the ripe age of 29-very-plus, those moments of delayed requiting seem fewer and fewer. We just don't have to wait for things as long anymore and those things that are dangled in front of us for months or years on end (re: Phantom Menace, Matrix Revolutions, adulthood) often aren't worth their measure of marketing.

But Harry, I have high hopes for you, lad. I have questions that need to be answered. I have people I want to see resurrected. I have acting I'd like to see redeemed. And so, on you, Harry, I pin my hopes of the world. Be my light, Harry. Be my salvation.

And of course, if you don't put out for me, Harry, it's only six months until season 4 of Battlestar Galactica.