There was a buzz around camp the day the new Harry Potter came out, late July '07. A good many parents had pre-ordered the book from Amazon; Potter-styled Amazon boxes, nearly a truck full, were delivered to the Ad Office in the morning. Several enterprising staff members got into the pile and pulled out their own copies and hustled off to periods off and rest hour to get started on the reading. Mail is delivered to campers at dinnertime and so for most of the Potterites there was a whole long glorious day of anticipation. At dinner VCs came with bags and armloads of books. Two Sacky counselors - Emily and Nikki, above - were dressed for the occasion.
Then the reading began. Somehow, campers who had, shall we say, a lot of activities to do, including an evening program, somehow got the time to read. Laiya A. was one of them. Laiya was already famous for, two summers earlier, having finished the then-new Potter book within 24 hours of its arrival. She did the same, somehow, in 2007. On this night I was walking around, CQ fire to CQ fire, "on call" (a sort of director-level night watch, a CQ of CQ's). Laiya was in cabin 36. At nearly 1 am, my "on call" evening nearly done, I walked slowly through Sacky (cabins 36-40, old 6-10--it used to be Susky). There was one little light shining out of a bunk window in 36. Surely this was Laiya, pulling an all-nighter for her cherished Harry. I walked quietly into the cabin...all asleep except indeed Laiya, who saw me and got a big smile on her face as she peered at me from under the flashlight which she held up with one hand while the other held the huge tome. And she said: "Al. It's really really good." I said goodnight and walked down the hill past the mists gathering across the surface of Lake Cole. Our own old magic, but for just that night not the only magic in the area.
Back in '05, Laiya finished volume 6 at sunrise. She was sobbing, sad at the death that concludes that book, but also, as she explained to me later, feeling lonely that she as a reader had experienced this all alone. The others in the cabin, her dear friends, awoke to the sound of Laiya's sobs and knew exactly what was going on. They all climbed into her bunk and all of them starting crying in sympathy. Through Laiya's tears: a smile. These were her friends and whatever it was that happened in this novel, they would feel what she feels.
Even the reading experience, typically a solitary thing, is an instigation to communal sympathy and emotional sharing. We're all in this together.
