I was seven when I climbed into the green rocking chair in our living room with Harry Potter's first adventure. I didn't enjoy reading much because my brother Craig, who trails me two years in age, had been reading longer and was much better at it. I liked to stick to the things I was better at, like coloring and handwriting, and Craig could have those inconsequential little skills like reading and math.
The first page dragged for me, as did the second and third. I flipped ahead to see how long the first chapter was — 17 pages. The daily routine of the Dursleys did nothing for me. Mr. Dursley drives to work, yells at people, thinks about drills, buys a doughnut … I groaned and scrambled out of the chair to return the book on the shelf.
"What are you doing?" my mother asked sharply, coming out of nowhere as mothers do.
"It's boring," I wailed, hoping the sheer pitch of my complaint would deter her.
"That book is a gift from your grandma, and you will read it. At least the first chapter, missy."
I sat back in the rocking chair, grumbling about my Miss Manners mother. I still had 14 pages to go, but it only took another four for Albus Dumbledore to show up on Privet Drive. No one ever had to bully me into reading again.
If Hagrid rescued Harry from a life of misery with the Dursleys, he rescued me from second-grade nothingness. I was so shy that every social interaction had me horrifically anxious and so scattered that one moment I was obnoxiously correcting other kids' responses in class and the next forgetting to do my homework. I had no athletic talent to discover, no faithful sidekick to push me along — no great love of anything at all.
In the most over-the-top, cliché way imaginable, Harry changed that for me. I drank in that first book faster than anything I had tasted in my young life. I loved the world J.K. Rowling created for me, I loved the characters, I loved magic — but most of all, I loved reading. I had already received all the lectures about how important reading was in my young life. Teachers, assemblies, "Reading Rainbow" — they all stressed to me with almost frantic urgency how FUN reading was supposed to be, all the while books just felt like more homework for me to struggle through.
And yet, books were never the same to me after Harry. "The Sorcerer's Stone" shoved me through the door to all literature, not just the kind written by J.K. Rowling. Almost overnight, I developed a passion for characters and words and stories. I immersed myself in Helen of Troy's tragedy, the mysteries of Nancy Drew, and the quaint tales of Laura Ingalls. It is hard to remember a time after falling into Harry's world when I didn't have a bookmark in between two pages somewhere. In the next few years, I would come to love stories and characters so much that I wanted to create some of my own.
So it was Harry Potter who turned me into a reader and then, eventually, a writer. And as life complicates itself, the economy crumbles, and everyone tries to sway me from sticking it out as an English major, I remember that green rocking chair and the book that plucked me from my elementary school woes.
Over the years my parents moved us cross-country a couple of times, and somewhere along the way, we got rid of the rocking chair. But when I sat down to reread the first Harry Potter book at the old age of 20, I realized it was the same paperback copy my grandma bought me when I was seven. Some things, I guess, just stay with you forever.
Contact Lauren Chval at lchval@nd.edu
