This is Why I’m not British

Although it breaks my heart. My goal in life is to grow up and be Hugh Laurie with his legit accent that he can turn on and off at will. And when I say his legit accent I’m referring to his American accent, so there’s a topsy-turvification of perspective for you. But we’re not here to talk about Hugh Laurie, stubbly though his face is; we’re here to talk about Harry Potter. Naturally.

We now interrupt these messages to present this disclaimer: I’m not a hard-core die-hard otherwise-hyphen-crazed Harry Potter fan. Actually I don’t much care for Harry at all; Neville is the bomb though. But the books are good, and that’s what I happen to be reading right now, so there. Relevancy managed.

Moving on. HP 6 is all about the snogging. Plus is has the greatest stand-alone quotes of the whole series I’ve come across so far, save for one of my favorites in number 5. Mostly due to Dumbledore, but that’s probably because he’s gay. Or maybe not. Actually, his coolness likely occurs independent of his gayness. But that’s not been substantiated. Anyway. Snogging. HP 6 is all about the snogging. Ron and what’s-her-face, especially. The point is, as I was reading that, I wanted no part of it. I don’t like the idea of this crude, carnally-based “snogging”; it seems so…I dunno, impersonal and mechanical, basically meaningless. It doesn’t take into consideration the other person and what they mean and all that stuff. I much prefer the notion of kissing.

And while we’re on the topic of books I’m reading/ have read/ pretend or claim to have read in order to appear smart/ fabricated entirely, let’s talk about Shades of Grey, grey being the British spelling to the inferior gray of those weird American people seeing as Mr. Fforde who is the author is from the United Kingdom which I’m pretty sure is what you get when you transplant British citizens into the video game Kingdom Hearts. Don’t confuse this book with that other one that’s the one I’m not talking about, because I’m not talking about that one. Actually, I’m not talking about this one either, but I like the title so I figure I’d work it in since it fits like those puzzle pieces that you just keep jamming together until they lie flat so seamlessly together.

So shades of grey. The older and wiser I get—one year at a time, year after year—the more I figure out that nothing is just as black and white as it seems at first glance. Except black and white photos after you’ve horked the contrast until there are only two colors left (black and white, in case you didn’t pick up on that). And panda bears, but only if they’re really clean; otherwise they have brown dirt, or I guess if they’d been fighting they might have red blood on them. But that’s about it, I can’t think of anything else that’s just straight-up black and white. And by I can’t think of anything else, I mean there is nothing else. Because if there was I would have thought of it.

Anyway, this is stemming from a conversation I’ve had a couple times with my mom about my sister dating. She’s not quite sixteen and being the happy Mormon family that we are, that means no dating yet. But she’s got friends that are boys. So the solution that my mom—and the other parents in the stake—have come up with is that their kids can hang out in groups and such as long as there’s a mismatched number of guys to girls, with all kinds of more detailed stipulations for specific scenarios. So I’m not doing a very good job of conveying this, but we keep having long off-shooting debates about the rules they’ve set and why the kids should stick to them and why we’re supposed to follow what the prophet says even if it is arbitrary. The main point I’m drawing from all of it though is that even something as seemingly clear-cut as Don’t date until you’re sixteen actually is not as clear-cut as it seems. My solution? Be gay. Duh.

P.S. I've set today as the deadline for telling my mom, because if I don't have a deadline it'll never happen. So hopefully that's what I'm doing right now.