Why I'll probably cry at the end of Potter 7

As the last Potter film grows closer and closer, I'm meeting it with mixed feelings.  As much as I want to see it, watching it marks the end of an important era of film for me.  Fantasy in the theater, as I know it, will come to an end.  Star Wars ended with Revenge of the Sith.  The Lord of the Rings ended with Return of the King.  I know The Hobbit will be coming out, but I wasn't as immersed in that was much as I was The Lord of the Rings.  Potter is now ending, and there is nothing left.  I've read A Game of Thrones, but it hasn't captured me as the previous three entities have.  Once Potter ends, there is nothing.  I've joked to some friend of mine that I have my Kool-aid ready to drink for when the final credit rolls on the movie.

Let me explain why the Potter series is so significant to me.  It all started in the fall of 2001.  I was a sophomore at UGA and was in my first semester of living on campus.  I commuted my freshman year.  I was taking Introduction to Philosophy among other classes and loving it.  Prior to this point, I had seen some Harry Potter advertisements in the kids section at Books-a-Million (my preferred book retailer in Athens) and thought little of them.  I'm not an avid reader, and certainly some kid's book isn't going to grip me enough for me to actually read it.

Fast foward a bit, and we're now either in November or December 2001.  I have the ticket stub somewhere that can confirm the date, but I know it was around that time.  Star Wars Episode II was supposed to be released in the coming year, and there was a trailer that was supposed to be shown with the release of the first Harry Potter film.  I was most excited--not because of Potter, but at the prospect of seeing glimpses of the newest Star Wars.  I purchased a ticket.

So I'm in the theater enduring the previews.  I realize that I've been gypped.  There was no trailer for Star Wars.  Later, I learned that the Star Wars trailer was shown in the Atlanta market only.  Soon, the Warner Bros. symbol appeared and I was greeted with a curious score from John Williams.  I wish I could give an accurate account of the whole experience, but upon digging through all of my file back-ups (including my catch-all "Beginning of Computing through December 2004" DVDs, I've found nothing blog-wise before August of 2002), I'm coming up empty.  I sat and watched an hour and a half chronicle of the life of a kid whose childhood of magic I would've so wished to experience myself as a kid.  It completely engrossed me from start to finish.  I felt the pain of the character Harry Potter and (notwithstanding child abuse and the loss of his parents) empathized with the idea of some of his experiences.

As I told many people, I left the theater "a changed man."  To this day, I cannot tell you what changed inside of me.  I only know that I was different after leaving the theater.  I believe I ended up watching it in the theater three times, which, to my knowledge, is the only film that has that honor.  Soon after seeing the film, my best friend, Courtney Searles, instructed me to read the books.  Through the end of the semester and Christmas Break, I read the first four books.  I had to force myself to only read two chapters at a time in order to get my reading done for philosophy and my work done for my music classes.

I am a fan of psychology and sociology -- especially with how it relates to kids.  Every day I teach is like watching a new hands-on experiment :P.  Soon after reading the first Potter book, I began my speculation to how the characters would develop throughout the series.  To this date, this is the only book series involving kids to which I have applied that amount of personal analysis.

I wish I could clearly articulate how Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone changed me as a person.  All I know is that it did.  Now, I'm faced with seeing the end of the force that affected me so.  I feel the same now as I did when reading the 7th book.  I didn't want it to end, but ending was inevitable.  I know that life will go on, and at some point there will be something else of significance that will affect me in such a way; however, I haven't experienced it yet.  I believe when our inner child dies, we cease to exist.  On July 15, 2011, some part of my inner child will die after being resurrected from seeming death almost 10 years earlier.