Only One of Us Thinks This is Cool

I remember the day my parents made the change from a mini-van to a suburban. They were excited to get rid of the green van that was always missing the front, right hub cap. I’m not sure that my mom was thrilled to be driving something the size of a tank but she did it anyways. She’s a trooper.

We were hanging out at my grandparents’ house while my parents went car shopping. I remember it vividly. They pulled up in this shiny blue suburban. We ran out to see it. My dad gave us approximately 6.4 seconds to look at the car before he said, “Kids, look at this!” We walked over to him and looked at the piece of paper he was holding. I have no idea what that piece of paper actually was, but it had an important bit of information on it. It told us who the previous owner was. Clyde Drexler. Clyde The Glide Drexler. We were very familiar with Mr. Drexler. We’d watched plenty of Rockets games, he was a superstar in Houston.

Needless to say, we thought it was pretty cool. I’m sure I went to school and told all of my friends. Anytime his name came up, I would tell people that we have his old suburban. It was kind of my claim to fame.

So one time in 8th or 9th grade, I went to the circus with my a few of my friends. It was then that I had my first random celebrity sighting. It was him, The Glide himself, at the circus. He was with his wife and kids, fighting the crowds. We stared and I, naturally, reminded my friends of my connection with Clyde.

“Go tell him,” Rachel said.

I peed my pants a little when she said that. I don’t do well with public speaking. Clyde Drexler is public.

Just kidding about peeing my pants. But my heartrate was out of control.

“No! I’m not talking to him. He doesn’t care!” Although I’m not sure why he wouldn’t care. I sure cared. It was probably like the 3rd coolest thing that had ever happened to me. (Behind meeting Ken Griffey Jr. and being allowed to dye my own hair.)

“Well I’m going to tell him,” Brad said. And off we ran. Four teens dodging the crowd to talk to one of our favorite Rockets. I wasn’t sure how this was going to go down, but I knew I wanted to be there for it.

“Hey, excuse me. My friend has your old suburban!”

“Oh really? That’s neat,” he answers.

We all nod our head awkwardly… out of things to say.

Apparently he was used to nervous kids so he kept going, “The white one?”

“No.”

“Oh. The red one?”

“No.” Silence. Crap. How many suburbans has this guy had?? We didn’t give him the chance to keeping guessing, “The blue one.”

“Oh. Yeah. Good car.”

Silence.

“See ya.”

At which point we freaked out because Clyde Drexler talked to us. Soon after, we reflected on the fact that he really couldn’t care less that we had his old suburban. It was a sad day for me. It was quite a lightbulb… people don’t always thing things are cool, even though you do.

I experienced the opposite feeling yesterday.

One cool feature that WordPress has is a list of things people have googled to somehow end up on my blog. I have a lot of random things that often make me want to apologize to the searcher. No, I can’t help you find a “company that ships cheddar wurst” – I don’t really even know what a cheddar wurst is.

I normally get about 5-15 people each day searching for “Harry Potter’s  Scar.” Click here to see why they end up here. Apparently if you google it and look at the images, I’m the third one. It’s kind of annoying because these are counted in my stats but they aren’t really readers. I wish they’d just go away.

As you may or may not know, the newest Harry Potter movie came out last night. Apparently a prerequisite to seeing the movie is to know what Harry’s scar looks like. Monday I had 95 people search for this scar. Wow.

I told my friend Jim about this craziness. He thought it was pretty cool. In fact, his words were “AWESOME! What a world we live in…”

Okay, Jim thinks it’s cool. I guess I should just embrace it. When I got home from work last night, I wanted to show Stephen the numbers. I was not prepared for what we saw. On Tuesday, 1618 people searched for Harry Potter’s scar. (I am hoping this will settle down and the only reason it’s so bad is because all the HP nerds were dressing up for the midnight showing and needed to know how to draw Harry’s scar on their heads.)

July 14 on my line graph was almost a vertical line. “Wow, sure makes all the other days look insignificant.” You’re right Stephen.

This is not cool. Not cool at all.

Meet the Potters

The purpose of this post is not to debate the Twilight series. Let me just throw that out there. If you haven’t read it and you’re a female who enjoys reading, get on it! And I don’t want to hear about it being too long or the writing style (Sarah) or that you don’t like that type of book. Just read it. Okay? Moving on.

As I was reading the first Twilight book, I became suspicious of everyone I encountered. All of a sudden, anyone could be a vampire. As far as I was concerned, I was Bella in a world full of Cullens. And it was my responsibility to narrow down the Cullen family tree. My sister is way too tan, she’s obviously not a vampire. My brother eats food. Lots of food. So he’s not a vampire. My grandpa? No, he grew up on a farm. And I don’t think sparkly farmers are taken seriously. Wait, maybe that’s why he quit farming and moved here. No, he eats too. Not a vampire. My friend Lyndsey? Heaven’s no. She sleeps. A. Lot. What about my dear husband? He has fair skin. He doesn’t go in the sun unless completely covered. He has black eyes. Obviously though, he’s not. While he does have a few vampirish (vampiral? vampiric? vampirian?) traits, he’s far from being a Cold One. He loves to sleep, he loves to eat. He’s aging. And he very rarely has the desire to kill me. Emphasis on the ‘rarely’… I will not go so far as to say ‘never’.

So I’m not married to a vampire. And I may not know any. And I know you’re lying if you’ve read the book and haven’t thought “Oh, maybe ______ is a vampire!” We can’t help it. We get into the story. If you watch X-Men you may walk down the street and think “I bet he’s a superhero.” Or after you watch Sixth Sense, you wonder if you are surrounded by dead people.

I never got on the Harry Potter bandwagon. Maybe one day I’ll read all 42 of those books. I’ve never really had the desire to read them but I’ve heard they are really good. I wonder if people who read those books wonder if there are wizards and witches and giant chessboards somewhere out there. I wonder how many kids have run into walls hoping that they could take a magic train to Hogwarts. Harry Potter is still a popular Halloween costume. People want to be magical. But are you magical? Does your Swiffer Wet Jet fly you to the grocery store? Does your Snuggie make you invisible? Hmm… Intriguing. Maybe Stephen is a wizard! I don’t know much about wizard characteristics. Are they hot? Cold? Do they age? Are they smart? Are they funny? Do they have to know how to play chess? I don’t know! All I know is this. Harry has a scar that means something special about something having to do with his wizard-dom. See. (I should note that I got this picture for some other blog, wasn’t sited… don’t want to break any copyright rules. I have no idea how that works…)

Doesn't he look tough with that Z scar on his head? And magical. He looks magical for sure!

Well if a funny, permanent  mark on your forehead is all it takes to make you a wizard, it looks like I’ve snagged myself one of those. Meet the newest member of Gryffindor:

He looks normal enough, right? Don’t be fooled though. These wizards are good at fitting in with us human-folk. Take a closer look.

The evidence

See that dark spot on my hubby’s forehead? It’s been there since Sunday afternoon. I know. It’s small. Not very noticeable. Hey Stephen, will you turn your head so we can get a look at the other side of your face?

Further evidence. And the reason Stephen can no longer keep his Wizard status a secret to his friends, family, and coworkers.

 So he’s either a child who somehow gets random stains on his skin, or he’s a wizard. Lets, please, go with the wizard theory.