The Harry Potter Pennant

Yesterday as I was writing, my roommate texted me a picture of a Hogwarts pennant, and asked if I wanted it. Well, of course I want it. That's how I roll. I'm a geek and I let my geek flag fly (or at least, I will now that I have one). So instead of saying "you're welcome" and keeping her response civil, Jerrilynn (who is just over a full decade older than I am) proceeded to explain that her neice was getting rid of her "childish" decorations for a style that was more grown-up.

I won't attempt to argue that a felt Hogwarts pennant isn't the sort of thing you'd typically find in the room of a college student in his early twenties, who remembers dressing up as Hagrid for Halloween. I won't deny that a framed print wouldn't be entirely more appropriate for a professional of my experience and ambition, or a woman of my taste and artistic experience. I also won't deny that my summer wardrobe of nerd-shirts and jeans isn't going to land me a corporate job. I don't want a corporate job, and I don't want a grown-up room if that means it has to be boring, and everything's supposed to fit in some color scheme straight out of a magazine. I don't want to live in a magazine. Not any kind of magazine, even if I were the kind of girl who'd look well there.

Basically, I just ran straight into geek prejudice - the same prejudice geeks have been suffering for half a century.

I've been thinking about 19th Century childhood because of my work (see my academic blog here), and I have found two basic theories: the theory that children evolve into adults teleologically, and the theory that children are their own separate species. Each of these theories has given rise to a separate and competing educational philosophy. In the teleological paradigm, a child's education should only train them for adulthood, and seek to restrict or excise childishness with self-discipline. In the species paradigm, education, if it exists at all, should only offer a child skills after that child has had an opportunity to grown in strength and intelligence from her/his natural play. Well anyway, that's the extreme Rousseautian version. Basically, the second philosophy says a child should be a child, and then stop being a child later.

When I was a child, I tried to be friends with my father's mother. It wasn't easy. She told me that ladies shouldn't wear dark nail polish - only variations of pink and white. So as a small child, I only wore shades of pink and white: I wanted to be a lady. Then as a teenager with gothic leanings, I realized that I was missing all the fun colors. But now as I look around and see the other women my age who paint their nails odd colors, they don't impress me. They seem flashy and plastic. The women, I mean, not just the nails. But I love my dark blue nails today.

What produces grown-up geeks? Are they detrimentally childish? Should I be ashamed of my new Hogwarts pennant, or should I revel in my sense of play?

Jennifer has four kids, and her oldest daughter (pre-teen) acts the same way about David Tennant that my friend Katie with the degree in Classics does.

The Bible, specifically 1 Corinthians 13:11, says: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." The prophet is talking about growing into more light, about maturing spiritually in a way that allows us to think with more complexity as we develop and study, but he ends with "things" rather than "thoughts." It's my instinct that, especially in the gospel, the subject of our thoughts does not change, but the way we process it does. That pattern certainly allows for grown-up geekery. We simply process the same types of things in a more complex way. We understand that Harry Potter is a franchise that began with young-adult novels, and we can appreciate their artistry as we can any other work produced by the human mind or muse. We seek for that which is "virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy" (Article of Faith 13), and if that means we have to seek in childrens' literature, then we do. I don't have any children, but I have a lovely collection of picture books (not all suitable for children).

But changing my approach to "childish things" is not the same as putting them away. I'm a geek. I like Spec Fic, and imaginative media. Am I denying myself light?

When I was at a very sensitive age, I was forced by circumstances to quit ballet - my whole life revolved around dance, and it disappeared, leaving me drifting without gravity. I was suicidal, and gasping for breath. I did not want to change, I did not want to grow up, I felt so much pain. After a little while, I realized that while my dreams of a balletic career were impossible, I still had an incredible imagination and I could create better dreams. I just had to let them change.

I am older now, and still constructing the same dreams I designed then - dreams I blew breath into, and nearly twenty years of hope. They're so delicate. What is mere steel in the scale of celestial physics? The smallest asteroid can crush it. Should I be metalworking, when I could be ruling a planet? Is there anything solid underneath this wildly overblown metaphor?