Hally Podder

All four of the Princessa's guests arrived within three minutes of each other. That, in and of itself, was amazing. More impressive was the geometric progression of the decibel level. Even at that, I think we were spared slightly as their voices screeched beyond the range of human hearing and into bat-intercept-only frequencies. Mayhem was horrified. (You'd think he at least would have been prepared since he's the one in school all day with them.) He looked at me and said his ears were bleeding. Then he nattered on about the signs of impending apocalypse. "The darkness approaches! What's that I hear (with my bleeding eardrums)? The sound of locusts?" I took pity on him and took him to the dance early. (He had a fabulous time but right now I'm all about the Princessa so you'll just have to content yourselves with that cameo appearance in today's post.) Duncan met the girls and immediately declared that he would take Chaos and Bug to the game store. They were gone in under five minutes which is impressive speed for a mini herd who as individuals take about 15 minutes to get out the door. As far as kids go, that left only Havoc and his buddy Brandon exposed to the deafening giggles of the Harry Potter fan club. The little guys are smart as well as cute. They ate their pizza and scooted upstairs to build a "Lego community." I'm tempted to say we heard nary a peep from them - but how could we have over the noise the girls were making?! They might have been peeping away and we would never have known. With everyone thus arranged and Linus out of town, it was just Bet and I on the front lines.

I remember being 12. I have distinct memories of my father covering his ears and leaving the room when I had friends over. I thought he was weird. Now? I have sympathy for him. Somewhere in the last couple of decades my ears have lost the ability to interpret piercing shrieks as something pleasant. Bet and I did discover that putting a couple of walls and a door or two between us and the girls baffled the sound to bearable levels. Actually, by some trick of the acoustics, we were able to distinguish their words better from two rooms away. It reminded me of Harry's finally being able to understand the golden egg's clue when he opened it underwater. Then again we had Harry Potter on the brain. As would you, had you been around these girls. It is ASTOUNDING how much HP they can pack into one evening. There was not a moment free of HP. They sang songs (and chants and epic poems) - each about some facet of the Harry Potter universe. Bet could not stop asking me, "WHERE do they learn this stuff?" To say the girls "watched" the Harry Potter movies might be mislabeling what they were doing. They played scenes, replayed scenes, skipped to another part, switched disks, jumped to special features, went back to the original movie, had a shouting match analyzing certain lines, dissected each character's appearance, flung spells at each other and at the people on screen, etc. It would not have been a pleasant viewing experience for the less than thoroughly indoctrinated. One of the girls brought a pirated copy of one of the movies from China. They played that one with the English subtitles on just to laugh at the mistranslations. I had to laugh with them at the one scene I saw. I don't know nearly as much about HP as these girls, but I'm fairly certain that there is no scene where Ron's mom is discussing yogurt with Hally Podder.

It was a fun, but long night. I woke up several times to check on the girls. At 2:30 a.m., they had turned off the movies but were still up talking. (Duh. Slumber party.) I inadvertently interrupted a game of "Would You Rather." (Do boys play this game? One person poses the question, "Would you rather kiss soandso or whositwhatsit?" and everyone has to state their preference. No fair saying something like, "Would you rather kiss Mr. Bean or Daniel Craig?" The choice can either be between awful and repulsive or handsome and charming. In my day you got extra points if you could make the first names the same, e.g. Tom Cruise or Tom Selleck, Sean Connery or Sean Penn.) As I shut the door behind me, I heard one of the girls say, "Ok, I've got one. Would you rather kiss Dobby or Goyle?" Bwa ha ha.

Moving to a new state is such a leap of faith (or a crap shoot - take your pick.) It could be the best thing you've ever done or it could be disastrous. My kids are resilient in so many ways, but of course I've worried about their adjusting. My worries on that score are fading. I love that my sweet, smart, goofy kids are attracting sweet, smart, goofy friends. I love that they're having fun and fitting in. If my daughter starts kissing house elves, we'll reassess, but until then - I'm thinking we're on the "best thing ever" end of the scale.
Peace.