number twenty: old favorite books

so this weekend i was sick. and we're not just talking migraine headache sick. we're not talking runny nose and hacking cough sick.

we're talking flu sick. it's the worst kind of sick.

everyone knows i complain a lot. probably more than most people. and usually about silly things, like that my socks aren't soft enough. but when a lady has the flu, a little complaining is bound to happen.

so this weekend, my poor parents had to suffer hearing me complain about how terrible i felt. about how i couldn't eat anything. about how all i wanted was sprite, and my mother had the nerve to buy 7-up. i've heard most women handle being sick well, and it's you men out there that are the wussies who can't handle it. that is very much not the case for me.

however, in the hours right before the deathly 2011 flu hit me, i was in my basement bedroom taking a gander at the many boxes stored near where i sleep. you see, when i was away at school my parents moved from the house i spent middle and high school in to the one i call home now. i didn't come home to help pack boxes (because clearly i'm a brat) and so now whenever my mind gets to wandering about where a certain long forgotten object is i know that i'm flat outta luck. it's boxed in the many boxes we've yet to unpack, and i'm not about to dig through them all.

that is, until i got to wondering where all my harry potter books were.

i know i know, nerdy. it just kind of hit me, and i had the insatiable need to get my hands on them.

after coming across many a spider, having a box of camping dishwear fall on my head, and getting very distracted by my brother's stash of tech-decks, i hit the mother load. i came across a box of my favorite books from my teen years.

you see, growing up i was a bit of a reader. and by "a bit" i mean it was something i loved. even more so than i loved obsessing about boys. even more than i loved worrying about how thick my eyebrows were. even more than i loved picking on my brother. even more than i loved spending hours on the phone with katie talking about who knows what. i gobbled up books, and there were some that i read over and over and over again. and this box i found contained all of them.

it was my holy grail. dusty. torn. creased edges. the smell of an old book. this box was an amazing find. this box was like finding a part of myself i'd forgotten about, since i'd forgotten many of these books. or at least i'd forgotten their titles. but upon cracking their worn spines i came across stories so familiar that i burned through one cover to cover, all 200 pages, in an hour.


friday, before i was knocked on my butt from being sick, i got lost in the heaven that was my adolescence.

or at least the heaven that was my literary adolescence.