Tricks and Treating

This was my costume for trick or treating Sunday evening, and to go to our neighborhood party: a polka dot dress with an elegant sheet mask. My brother had gotten the sheet mask from his summer trip to Japan, and he suggested that I could wear it. It created quite the eerie effect. A lot of people who saw it liked it.

Only one rub existed: there was no trick or treating. It wasn't because of the grey sky, or the rain from the morning. It wasn't because of damage from a hurricane, since a hurricane missed us by a narrow margin. No, it was because the neighborhood association decided that trick or treating would take people away from the block party and dog parade.

"Halloween without trick or treating?" I pretty much said. "Are you kidding me?"

We went back to the party instead, and walked around, admiring the decorations. We accidentally picked up a bag of dog treats, ripped cupcakes from cobwebs, and watched a group of children in costume dance with the DJ. Then we drove home and washed up for dinner. It felt like a satisfying night.

 Image source:https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/HalloweenPumpkin2.jpg

Halloween is my favorite holiday, because it's the only day we get to dress up and show off our best costumes. The fun of trick or treating comes from seeing the decorations that neighbors put up. You have the traditional pumpkins, and cobwebs and skeletons, but then you get some creative stuff, like giant purple spiders. Last night we also saw orange torches that flared with power.

Trick or treating also has its fair share of risk. Parents worry about their kids getting run over in the street, or walking around in the dark. That's why these days most trick or treating happens before sunset, with parental supervision. Our mom insists on driving us around since we don't have sidewalks, and one can easily get exhausted. There are the usual rumors of pranksters running out, and strangers poisoning treats (the latter of which was disproved).

Next year I may suggest that our family go to another neighborhood or a mall for trick or treating or another neighborhood. While the party is fun, I do miss the crawling around to see what other houses offer. Plus, one can't refuse free candy.

A Small Potter World: Why We Don't Need the Cursed Child

At midnight on Saturday, July 30, my library system held a release party for the script book of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The play premiered this year, and made waves for casting a black woman as Hermione. J.K. Rowling didn't write the script, though she did write the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, but she did approve and allow the story to become canon.

I didn't attend this event, for one important reason: I may have grown up with Harry Potter, but I read the books to their official ending.That ending came one day in 2005, when "nineteen years later" seemed sufficient at the time.

Spoiler warning: Do not read further if you don't want to know details about The Cursed Child.

When Harry Potter ended, it marked an era of change. It meant that the kids and adults who grew up with the series had to find new works, but could keep creating the scarves, songs and crafts. Daniel Radcliffe could move onto Broadway, while Emma Watson developed her film career while attaining a college degree. We felt satisfied, with a few loose threads hanging. Pottermore vignettes would provide nuggets of information.

The Cursed Child doesn't tackle the issues that the end of the series would bring up, like the struggle to reform the wizarding world after a great war, the Muggleborn witches and wizards who became lost to the school system, or the next generation bearing the scars of their legacy. While Harry struggles with the trauma of surviving as so many died, his son Albus struggles with fitting into this new world. They both encounter Draco Malfoy's son, a nice kid named Scorpio who is nothing like his father. Scorpio instead of dealing with the obvious legacy issue -- that his dad was a prejudiced Death Eater wannabe -- deals with rumors that he's Voldemort's son, conceived via his mother going back in time. Drop in a new character that could be a fanfiction offshoot, as well as time travel, and you get a convoluted, unnecessary plot that makes readers stare at the script with a bewildered expression.

Harry Potter teaches readers to be compassionate, that you have to look at a person's choices to judge them, and that being brave is extremely difficult. Conflicts reinforce these events within the narrative, as well as the need to constantly see the other side of the story. Karma hits everyone in the end, good and bad, for their actions, while occasionally good people suffer terrible things.

The Cursed Child doesn't reinforce any of these themes. Scorpio, the best character in the script, doesn't want to be his father but is constantly judged before he even gets a chance to pick a side, even by Harry. Harry can be judgmental at times, but he knows better than to distrust someone because of what their parents did. That makes no sense at all. Harry, an orphan who craved a loving family, would never tell any child that he wishes they weren't his son, which he does in the play. That's just one of the many inconsistencies in the show. The rumor itself seems too ridiculous, because Time Turners work on stable time loops, and it's something that a DNA test could verify. And the character that appears and convinces Albus and Scorpio to go back in time? The original series had no hint of her, or plausibility.

So does The Cursed Child bring anything new? It brings up the pervasive survivor's guilt, the wishing of saving someone who suffered. It brings up that you can't change the past, which anyone can tell you, but you can make different choices to improve your future. At the same time, these themes can't save the show, or the script.

Growing up gives one a different perspective on Harry Potter. As a child I read Harry Potter for the magic, the descriptions of food, and for the adventure. It was easier to ignore Professor Snape's bullying and Umbridge's abuse because they got karma.  As an adult when I read the books, however, I get anxious. The real world has many people like Umbridge who get away with their actions, and you wish someone in the books would stomp her onscreen. We already got a world where karma kicked in, instead of undoing that karma temporarily using a Time Turner.

We have enough Harry Potter, enough of the good films and the books. Time Warner gave us those, LEGO games, and theme parks. We have the fanbase, and enough fanfiction to fill the Library of Congress. Heck, we even have loving homages to Harry Potter's impact like Fangirl and Carry On  by Rainbow Rowell. The market meets our needs.

We are satisfied, J.K. Rowling. We don't need another story to muddle the narrative. And if we did, we need one that reinforces what you wrote first. So please, let's read your thrillers instead.

A Spare Pair

Last week I decided to try something new; I pulled out an old pair of glasses that I hadn't worn since high school. My current glasses are rectangular with thick black frames. They look rather stylish, but one of the right handles is loose for some reason. A tennis racket colliding with the frames probably had something to do with the looseness. I took it off so that I could get the frames tightened. I opened a compact box and pulled out my old glasses to wear for several days.

I have to admit that seeing the My Big Fat Greek Wedding sequel contributed to this idea. In the second movie, protagonist Tula loses her glasses after her dad breaks them by accident, and she has to temporarily wear her old plastic frames before renewing her contacts. Her reflection in the mirror gives her memories of that hard time, of before she met her husband and found her career as a travel agent. She switches to contacts as soon as she can.

Image source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Reading_glasses.jpg
My old glasses have thinner frames, and tiny plastic nubs for balancing the lenses above the nose. The sensation wasn't that much different. My prescription has remained the same since I was a teenager, and I could see clearly once I wiped away the dust. They didn't spark many memories, since I can't remember which year I wore these frames. But when I put them on, I looked in the mirror and thought I still looked good with them.

I've worn glasses since I was a kid. Before my eyes developed mild astigmatism, I wanted to wear glasses because my heroes - Arthur, Harry Potter, and such-- wore them and seemed to enjoy themselves. Later on I wanted to wear them because contacts seemed very uncomfortable and tended to get lost while I was a middle school student. I do wear contacts for work, but at home I prefer glasses for convenience. Usually I get comments about how glasses hide my eyes, and that contacts reveal their large size and pupils.

Image source: https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1126/4609827016_1bb49bf82c_b.jpg


Sometimes I want glasses to define me. Glasses show that I read a lot, that I write a fair amount, and that I do think. Other times I want people to see my eyes, and I wear contacts. Neither of these choices make me less attractive. That's something I know with confidence. Other things seem far more uncertain, like if the sonnet I submitted to a magazine will get accepted.

I may pull out those glasses again to try on, and to remember how I felt as a teenager. It would be nice to dive back into those feelings as we enter another October. I may not have confidence about many things,  but I am confident about when I decide to wear my glasses.