A Return to Childhood: I < 3 RW

I have a problem. It’s an addiction. My community is very aware of it, and I recognize it as a problem, but I cannot stop.

I am addicted to Harry Potter.

It started the week that I arrived in Pohnpei, by chance the same week that the final Harry Potter film came to the island (fate?). I decided, for my first cook and community night, to make the evening Harry Potter themed. We had a feast in the “Great Hall,” I dressed as Dumbledore, and we did many Harry Potter activities.

Hangs on the door to our apartment

 It only got worse. My parents sent me over with a Harry Potter themed issue of People magazine. Rachael and I decided to carefully cut out the pictures of the actors and decorate our apartment with them.

It got worse. I began rereading all of the books and have often neglected sleep and/or work to read “one more chapter.”

It got worse. I often slip Harry Potter references or jokes into normal conversation. My friend wrote me a song for my birthday in which Emma Watson suffers many insults.

It got worse. My parents sent me all of the movies and a Lego Hogwarts castle for Christmas.

It was really this last point that drove home the lesson that I can learn from all this (really trying to find reason in this madness): I have returned to my 6-year-old self.

Hogwarts Lego, thanks Santa!

Remember being a kid and finding extreme joy in a cup of hot chocolate, in playing hide-and-go-seek, and dancing like a robot with your friends? Well, I have done all of these things in the past couple of weeks, if not every week over the last 6 months.

As you step away from the computer, live without a cell-phone, and spend all of your free time with the same 4 people, you get creative. You find things to entertain you, and often these are the same things that entertained the 6-year-old version of you.

I sometimes hear people say something like, “Remember how incredibly happy you would get as a child running through the sprinkler on a hot day/ waking up to a snow day/ eating an ice-cream cone? Man, I wish I was still a kid.” Well, great news, that Nickelodeon-watching, onesie-wearing, nose picker is still inside of you. Turn off the computer and go play tag with some friends. Forget work, spend the evening coloring with crayons. Put down the cell-phone and reread your favorite children’s book.

For, as Albus Dumbledore says, “It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”  

Skipping stones! (Molly, Rachael, and Brad= my community)

Building sandcastles! (Hiwitt, our neighbor, and Molly)