#MicroblogMondays 24: Quidditch!
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On April 11th, just a little over two months away, they’re going to be livestreaming the Quidditch World Cup. Am I going to be watching? Yes, I’m going to be watching. Wearing my Ravenclaw robes.
A few months after that, the twins turn 11. They aren’t awaiting their owls as much as they were a few years ago. Sometimes I wonder how I would feel if it were real, if they got an acceptance letter to a magical boarding school. Would I send them? Would I mourn losing those years that I hadn’t counted on losing? I mean, it’s one thing if you’re a magical family; you know it could happen. But if you’re a Muggle, wouldn’t it be shocking and a tad upsetting to think that this child that you thought would be at home with you is suddenly far away, at a castle in Scotland, and you can only see them during winter break and the summer months?
While we all say we want to go to Hogwarts, would you really have wanted to leave home at 11 and go to boarding school unexpectedly? I don’t know if I would. And I would really miss the twins if they got their letter.
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36 comments
I moved out of my parents’ house on my 18th birthday. After working for a few years (full time work plus full time college) and getting a scholarship, I left the country. That was 23 years ago, and I haven’t lived in the country of my birth since and never, ever will again. So yeah, I’d totally have gone. However if my son followed in my footsteps?! NNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! :'(
A part of me thinks that I would have been okay with going to the magical school. But everypast of me says I am never fine with sending my son away at the age 1, no matter how magical it is!
At 11, I was reading boarding school books and wishing I could go. I was at a two-room school in the country and was impatient to see the world. I left home at 17, to live overseas. Though yes, 17 is very different from 11. But I would have jumped at the opportunity.
I totally would have left for boarding school if I had the opportunity! One of my closest friends went to boarding school in high school (a little older, I know) and I am still pretty envious. However, as other commenters have mentioned I would be devastated if my Bug went away to school.
I don’t think I would have been able too. I was such a homebody, that the idea of being away from home for longer than a day was too much for me to handle!
Although, the idea of going to Hogwarts is pretty awesome.
Quidditch world cup?? really!! Let me stop hyperventilating… will come back and read the rest of the post later….!!
Ahhh Harry Potter. Lovely distraction from life’s troubles! Let me tell you how excited I am to hear of the Quidditch World Cup!! *hint, very*.. I don’t know about boarding school. I think it really depends on the kind of kid you were. I probably would have been excited and done ok.. but I know a lot of kids that wouldn’t have. My sister probably would have fallen apart. Then again, she’s younger and would have already had me there.
I have trouble when Liam goes camping for the weekend! I don’t think I would handle him going to boarding school, no matter how cool and magical it was, very well.
I would have gone. Anything to be away from my sister! Plus my two older sisters were already away at college, so it wouldn’t have seemed too strange. My child, however, swears she’s never leaving. She’s only going to the University that’s 10 minutes’ drive away. She will maybe move out, but only if she can build a big house where I can come live too.
I desperately wanted to go away to boarding school at 11. Someone from Exeter came to my middle school to talk to us about it and I begged my parents. A set of twins from my class went and I was SO incredibly jealous.
I also desperately wanted to go to boarding school when I was 11, and would not have missed anyone enough to warrant staying home…
My son probably wouldn’t go. He’s 8 now, but he’s already never leaving home. My daughter? Maybe. I’d miss her enormously.
Mel, what age do you think it’s appropriate to begin reading the HP books to kids? I worry about the scary parts.
I probably would have loved boarding school. But, 11 is awfully young!
I wouldn’t have wanted to leave at 11. A bit older, maybe.
I don’t know about my daughters, but I would love to go to Hogwarts 😛
Life is so magical Mel….lets experience it totally 🙂
I wouldn’t have wanted to leave home. But my SIL was sent to boarding school around 12, and she absolutely loved it. She’s an independent person, but I can’t really say if she’s independent as a result of boarding, or if she was already an independent person.
I’ve never read the Harry Potter series, but when I was a kid I adored pretty much anything by Enid Blyton – especially her stories of girls’ boarding schools. The idea of going off to boarding school was so foreign and intriguing that a part of me always wished I could give it a try. Of course, since I didn’t live in a part of the world where boarding schools were common – and I very much doubt my parents would have sent me to one anyway! – it was an unlikely dream; still, the whole idea fascinated me.
Would I have gone at 11? No way. 15 maybe. My kids, oh my, no that’s not happening. I’m already sad about 15 years into the future, no way I”m shortening that to 8 years!
I really, really wanted to go to boarding school at 13. (I got the idea in my head after meeting a girl at summer band camp who attended a boarding school.) But my father wouldn’t let me go. . . even though I could have attended on scholarship for free. . . because he wasn’t ready for me to leave home.
In retrospect, although I am sorry to have missed out on the much-higher-quality education that experience would have afforded me, I am glad to have had the extra years at home with my dad and with my paternal grandmother (who died during my first semester of college, just a few years later).
OMG! A Quiddich World Cup!?!?! Awesome!
Honestly, as much as I loved the idea of moving away from home when I was younger, I know how much I struggled with homesickness. So I love the idea, but know I would have struggled.
I would have jumped in a heart beat. I was obsessed with magic and so ready to be away from my siblings.
It would be really hard to let my little one go. Seeing her twice a year would be so sad…
I also desperately wanted to go at 11. I did go at 15! (I tried to go at 14, but didn’t get in at 14.) But I also went home on weekends when I was in boarding school… it’s harder to do that in England. Of course, I assume I wouldn’t have gone to the Hogwarts in England, but one somewhere in the US…
Our son says he wants to live with us forever and doesn’t want to go away to college, so I’m guessing boarding school is a non-starter. I’m a little worried though, as all the men in DH’s family marry their high school sweethearts, and DH found me at boarding school. Will our son find somebody perfect for him in our small town?
Leaving at 11 would have changed my life for the better, but my mother’s life for the worse, as she was ill from 8th grade through freshman year of college when she passed. So I would have loved to have gone, would have gone, and would have left t 13 to go home and do what I did.
I think there are two sorts of muggle families. Hermoine talked about her parents being proud that she was accepted. I would want a sacred promise that my memories would remain intact, however.
Quiddith World Cup? Goooooo Hufflepuff! (Yeah. I’m Hufflepuff, y’all. And proud! http://www.buzzfeed.com/charlotte820/12-reasons-why-hufflepuff-is-actually-badass-9rx2#.gq8vQWvRl)
One kid from my elementary school was sent to a boarding school for middle and high school. I always thought it was the saddest thing to go away like that. I think it would be different though if boarding schools were a more normal part of our culture. I’ve somehow never thought about that part of going to Hogwarts, being away from home starting at age 11. I would not want my kids to go.
Never read Harry Potter but I wouldn’t have wanted to go away at age 11. A lot of people from my school ended up going away to boarding school- I think most of them got into alcohol and drugs far sooner than college. No thanks!
I think I had read too many books about depressing boarding schools by that time to want to go.
Re: Quidditch. Wow. I didn’t realize what an official thing it had become until I went to a comicon event in December that included Quidditch matches. There’s an actual rulebook and everything! Kinda blew my mind.
I think boarding schools are, or at least were, much more common in Britain and maybe the eastern U.S. than most of North America. Which is probably why they seemed so exotic to me when I was growing up. I would have loved to have gone. In theory, anyway. In reality, I probably would have been homesick, and bullied. :p
I honestly don’t know how I would have done in boarding school. I was often threatened with the idea that if I didn’t stop doing x, y, or z social services would take me away. Looking back… it probably would have been nice to be able to go to a boarding school, once I got past the shock of it. Provided, of course, that I got to bring my cat and that no one messed with my teddy bear. That would require massive retaliation.
Anyway, my first thought on reading this post was: I went to the University of Minnesota so all of our colors are Gryffindor anyway. 🙂
Not sure if I would have wanted it. Probably not, though I knew about boarding school for ballet and was intrigued. I can’t see my parents sending me, though. Too protective. My child? Dunno – the way she’s growing and learning, she may not want or need me at all by that age!
I went to boarding school from age 14-18. It was a Quaker school. All girls. Very good education that I would have not had if I had stayed home. Oh my gosh, there are some serious posts I could write about boarding school. I think I detached very seriously from my parents ( especially my mum) when I went and I never really attached again. I read Mallory Towers and fantasized about what it would be like but I was wrong.
I have very fond, if conflicted memories about that whole experience. It left me with the highest expectations of my peers and me, most of which I never met.
It was very hard being the poorest kid in the school. The census was only about 3 percent Quaker so it wasn’t full of the fun and fellowship I had experienced at Quaker summer camp and weekends away.
I would absolutely hate it if my kids wanted to go to boarding school. The likelihood is practically zero. I’ll be happy for them to go away to camp if they want to though.
Oh Harry…I cannot wait to read those books to my kids. Although, we will probably listen to them instead of reading them because Jim Dale makes them all the more delicious.
The first response that comes to me is ‘NO’. However it being a magic school and all, I just might have been excited to send them off. I’ll know for sure only if it happens though. I’m still not sure I’d like them to be part of a whole different world.
Hogwarts looks kind of creepy (since I am clearly a muggle), So I’m glad I went to the school I did – which funnily enough had similar wooden staircases! Thankfully they didn’t move. 🙂
Re boarding school, ours wasn’t much for alcohol or drugs, but there was a LOT of sex. Probably not the case for 11 year olds so much as 16-18 year olds.
I’m not sure if I would have wanted to go to boarding school. Now if it was a performing arts school I would have begged to go, but regular school? No thanks. However if I could do magic, like at Hogwarts, I would probably go there too. In fact if I could learn magic I’d want to go right now!
I absolutely would have wanted to be chosen to be sent off to boarding school at 11! I never felt like I fit in at home & would have loved being somewhere new. On the other hand, I’d be devastated if Elena was pulled away from me at 11, heck I’m already dreading when she goes to university & am already making plans to move with her if she goes away to school…not into her dorm or anything, just in whatever city she winds up in.