HAPPENINGS--HARRY AND OTHERWISE

22 June 2003

A Fed Ex truck pulled up to the door today and dropped off my copy of the latest Harry Potter. I'm not a Potter fanatic, but I admit to getting caught up in the hype--and besides, with Amazon' discount and promised delivery on day #1, I figured it was a too-good-too-pass-up deal. I envision the inside of the Fed Ex truck filled with Potter books.

Last night we went to see a production of "Show Boat," which I was reviewing, and when it was over, we meandered over to "Diagon Alley," known on other days as the E St. Plaza, where a big Harry Potter Happening was taking place. All the stores had changed their names to names of businesses found in the famous shopping mall in the Potter books. Witches, wizards, and other creatures in all shapes, sizes, and ages milled around playing games, making magic potions, checking out the owls for sale, and waiting for the book store to open at 12:01 a.m. so they could get their copies of the book right away.

Since I wasn't there to buy a book, but to look for photo ops, and since it was a tad chilly, we didn't stay too long. But it was fun to see such a hotbed of activity at midnight on a Friday night.

Today it was a happening of another sort. Our friends Rich and Pat were having a 40th anniversary celebration, complete with ceremony for renewal of their vows. It was a lovely party in the back yard of their home, with about 40 friends in attendance, including all of our Newman group first generation, which hasn't been together in, it seems, quite awhile.

A funny thing happens when you attend a social event with people who either haven't seen you in a long time or who have never met you and you show up looking like I look right now, you spend most of the day answering the inevitable "what happened to you??" (or, alternatively, "what happened to you??").

After you explain about how you happened to acquire the injury, you're amazed at how many people around you have their own bike injury stories. Gene fell over his handlebars and cut his face and it left a scar across his nose; Bill was riding down the hill with one of his kids and the kid stuck a foot in the spokes of the front wheel (I never did ask where the kid had been riding) and they tumbled down the hill. Someone hit a pothole. Someone skidded on gravel. Someone fell while going down a hill on a mountain bike.

The stories went on and on.

My friend Char just took up bike riding in the past month and got her accident out of the way the first day. In fact, her knee looked a lot like mine and we compared injuries.

Concetta didn't have a biking accident, but broke her foot in April and is in a cast (doubly awkward since she is also in a wheelchair; she had fallen out of the wheelchair and caught her foot). We decided that the moment for recording the injuries had to be observed.

But it was a nice afternoon, beautiful weather, and since we're all old, it broke up early enough that I could come home, write this journal entry and still have time to curl up for a bit of time with Harry Potter.