who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

So I suppose this is a bad time to admit to the internets at large that my childhood was not really defined by Harry Potter. I was never waiting for my Hogwarts letter. I don't feel like I'm at the end of an era. I'll see the movie, but I'm not lining up tonight.

I mean, not that I don't like Harry Potter. (Well, actually the boy himself is rather bland to me and I've been over the Reluctant Hero trope for a really long time, but the world is okay, and I always wanted to see all the teachers' backstories, because I bet those are hilarious and awesome. But then, I just like professors.) But I didn't read the books until after the fifth one came out, and I was about to start college, so I guess I had just turned fifteen or so.

I spent my childhood looking for closets with Narnia in them, or at least a decent secret tunnel with murder mysteries stretching back to the Underground Railroad. I was in the library, looking for the book that would have the Wizard's Oath in it. I climbed over walls looking for secret gardens, and I gave serious consideration to running away from home, not because I was unhappy but because that's when adventures happen to kids. I found out all I could about Egypt and Mesopotamia and Vikings, so that maybe I could be an archaeologist and unearth interesting things, like those kids in the Cooper Kids Adventures. I read lots of history so that when I found a way to travel in time, I would know where I was and what to do. I read science books so that I would know how to make explosions (for diversions!) and see if there was a way to find and use tesseracts.

But I never sat at home waiting for my Hogwarts letter to arrive.

Obviously, I never found Narnia; I can see into the walled garden across from my apartment and it's just a mess of weeds; the closest I ever got to finding a secret tunnel was the laundry chute in a friend's house; I found a lot of good books but never the Wizard's Oath; I never became an archaeologist or an astrophysicist. But somewhere along the way, I learned what turns out to be a hell of a lot of history and science and literature and vocabulary. I learned how to keep looking for my dreams even when my particular closet does not contain Narnia, and now I'm involved with some really cool publications and applying to a PhD program. And I've learned that even if it's not any of the other worlds I was looking for, this world has a lot of interesting stuff in it.

(Yes, I'm aware I'm starting to sound like Sarah Jane Smith.)

I'm too old for Hogwarts now. I'm probably too old for Narnia. It's likely the window of opportunity has passed to say the Oath. The only thing left now is probably getting picked up by the Doctor. But now I'm in the habit of going out and looking to see what new worlds I can find. I just have to keep my eyes open and my feet moving.